Published Paper Details:

The word 'Bhakti' is an enigmatic term to define. It is construed both as individual devotion as well as a socio-religious and literary movement, which makes it distinctive from other movements. As a social movement, it critiqued the upper caste orthodoxy or class hierarchy and believed in the equity and oneness of humankind. As a religious movement, it emphasized personal devotion to God without any mediation and the possibility of salvation for all through good deeds and austere living. As a literary movement, it provides a considerable impetus for the efflorescence of vernacular literature and liberated poetry from the eulogies of kings, infusing it with the themes of spirituality. Unlike other movements, it endeavoured for both the individual and the social upliftment of the lower strata of society. The word 'empowerment' has myriad connotations; however, the apt version of empowerment is when a person is not the victim of any complex--cast complex, religious complex, social complex, or any other. The Bhakti movement offered the marginalised subjects a platform to fight against all socio-religious inequalities and consequently helped them to come out of these imposed shackles or complexes. This paper reviews the Bhakti movement as a sui generis movement for the empowerment of ghettoised and marginalised subjects in all respects. It also explicates how the Bhakti movement helps us to cater to and tackle the current scenario of India, characterised by acute polarization and extremism.