Tukārām in Three Ideas
the essentialsAbhaṅga
The “unbroken” song — short devotional poems to Viṭṭhal, sung by pilgrims for four centuries.
Against hypocrisy
He mocked false saints, pedantic Brahmins and empty ritual.
Anguish and grace
Poverty, famine and the deaths of his family turned him to God — his poems are honest about despair.
Tukārām (c. 1608–1649), affectionately called Tukobā, was a Marathi poet-saint of the Vārkarī tradition, devoted to the god Viṭṭhal of Pandharpur, and the most beloved poet in the Marathi language. A grocer and moneylender of the Śūdra caste from the village of Dehu near Pune, he lost his first wife and son in the famine of 1630, his business failed, and he turned to God. He composed several thousand abhaṅgas (“unbroken” — devotional songs), collected in the Tukārām Gāthā, which are sung by the Vārkarī pilgrims and quoted throughout Maharashtra.
Poetry
Tukārām’s poems are remarkable for their honesty: they express not only love and joy but doubt, despair, anger at God, self-reproach and contempt for hypocrisy.
On grief and grace:
It is good, O God, that I became bankrupt; that famine struck; that my wife and son died starving… It is good that I was shamed before the world — so I came to you.
On hypocrisy:
Some recite the Vedas, some the Purāṇas, but only for money… Tukā says: none of them knows God.
On devotion:
Those who suffer, those who are troubled — call them your own. Know that God is there; the saint is the one who is like that. (je kā ranjale gāñjale, tyāsī mhaṇe jo āpule…)
A Brahmin, Rāmeśvar Bhaṭṭ, outraged that a Śūdra should write about religion, forced him to throw his notebooks into the Indrāyaṇī river; Tukārām fasted on the bank for thirteen days, after which, the legend says, the notebooks floated up undamaged — and Rāmeśvar became his disciple.
Legacy
Tukārām’s abhaṅgas are the heart of the Vārkarī tradition and of Marathi culture. Modern Marathi writers, reformers (Mahatma Phule, Ambedkar) and translators (Arun Kolatkar, Dilip Chitre’s Says Tuka) have celebrated him as a poet of radical honesty and social criticism.
Curiosities
did you know?- Legend: the Brahmin Rāmeśvar Bhaṭṭ, angry that a Śūdra wrote religious poetry, made him throw his notebooks into the Indrāyaṇī river. After thirteen days of fasting on the bank, the notebooks resurfaced, dry and intact.
- Shivaji, the Maratha king, is said to have sent him gifts; Tukārām returned them.
- Legend says that in 1649 he ascended to heaven bodily in a divine chariot.
Questions to Argue About
debate club →- Can grief be the beginning of devotion?
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