Bhakti sants opened god-aspiration to all castes
Evidence
What was crucial, however, was that anyone from any strata of society—men and women—could aspire to reach god. The twelfth-century 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
- DEFINE: Defines the Bhakti movement’s egalitarian core and its various regional manifestations.
- XREF: connects to: Bhakti offered god without priestly mediation to all castes and genders
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Bhakti offered god without priestly mediation to all castes and genders
Broader Connections
- Bhakti offered god without priestly mediation to all castes and genders
#corroborates(0.92)