ABSTRACT
To think in terms of vernacular modernity, or even of alternative to modernity itself, is to recognize that the precolonial past of non-European societies was not made only by prescriptive forces of the depersonalized systems of ‘civilizations’, ‘cultures’ and ‘religious beliefs’ or, in the case of India, by compulsive caste identities. It was made by self-conscious people who were acquiring the status of individuals and collective historical actors through their interactions. The public sphere of bhakti was the site of the voice of such individuals in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in north India. The idea of bhakti was certainly not new, but the idiom of its articulation and the social base of its practitioners were certainly new in this era. The chapter argues that the ‘newness’ of this historical phenomenon can be better grasped through the category of the public sphere. In doing so, it critically engages with questions such as: did bhakti really help create a set of social spaces distinct from private ones and autonomous from the state? And did such spaces really communicate public sentiments to the state apparatus and in some way influence it?
