Bhakti movements attacked caste hierarchy from within Hindu tradition.

Evidence

Basava-led Veerashaiva movement in the Kannada-speaking South, that launched the literary vachana tradition, repudiated the caste system and the primacy of the Brahmin. Between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries, sometimes fusing with elements of Islam and Sufism, the Bhakti movement manifested itself variously in the western, northern and eastern parts of the subcontinent through the work of sants, or teachers, who were largely from working-caste backgrounds but also included Brahmins (like Dnyaneshwar in western India or Chaitanya in Bengal) who embraced Bhakti’s egalitarian credo. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1029

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s goal of understanding caste annihilation — Bhakti is a prior internal reform movement Ambedkar’s radical critique builds on and ultimately finds insufficient. — connects to: Bhakti offered colonial intellectuals a democratizing, anti-Brahminical medieval inheritance — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1193; Hindu nationalism recruits diverse Bhakti movements into one essentialized spirituality — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1148