The objective of this paper is to probe how the social imagination fostered by the egalitarian thrust of the Bhakti movement facilitated the accommodation of interpretations of freedom and equality (that came into the subcontinent through the encounter with colonialism), and paved the way for the emergence of a secular democratic social imaginary in modern India. To that end, I want to consider how the conceptual resources of Bhakti - expressible through what Fred Dallmayr calls ‘‘ the standard of castelessness, nonhierarchy and caring human fellowship’’ - contributed to the process of translation of ethical ideals in colonial India to yield a spirited assertion against intragroup (and intra-religious) domination entrenched through Hinduism’ s caste order by key Indian figures such as Jotiba Phule, M G Ranade and B R Ambedkar. To accomplish the above objective, I will probe the largely overlooked democratic implications of the practices of bhakti and suggest that an analysis of these practices can significantly contribute toward understanding aspects of the culture of Indian democracy. I will also consider how the moral vocabulary of bhakti has influenced dominant articulations of freedom in modern Indian political thought. In so doing, I want to suggest that an analysis of the idea of “religion” as conveyed in the bhakti traditions can bring to the fore a way of conceptualizing the link between religion on the one hand, and discourses of freedom and equality (associated with liberalism and democracy) on the other, in a way that contrasts with conventional and historically situated understandings of this link in the modern west. Through the aforementioned exercise I also hope to respond to assessments of liberalism and secularism that consider these doctrines to be tied ineluctably to cultural formations associated with the modern west, and thus unsuited for polities such as India.
