“Women in Pre-Colonial India: Purdah, Poetry, and the Bhakti Movement”

Imagine a time when the lands of India witnessed both profound restrictions and remarkable resilience. Pre-colonial India presents a fascinating paradox for women, whose lives were shaped by foreign invasions that brought seclusion, yet who found powerful voices through poetry and spiritual devotion. This period reveals how women navigated between constraint and creativity, between enforced silence and eloquent expression.

How invasions transformed women’s lives through purdah 🔗

The landscape of women’s freedom in northern India changed dramatically with successive invasions. While practices restricting women’s mobility existed in ancient Indian society, the arrival of Islam intensified these restrictions, and by the nineteenth century, purdah had become customary among Hindu elites throughout India. The term purdah, meaning curtain or veil, encompassed both physical segregation and the requirement for women to cover their bodies and faces.

This practice didn’t emerge in isolation. Historians believe purdah was acquired by Muslims during the Arab Empire’s expansion into Iraq in the seventh century, where it built upon existing Persian and Byzantine customs. When Muslim rule came to northern India during the Mughal Empire, it influenced Hindu practices, and purdah spread to the Hindu upper classes of northern India.

The adoption wasn’t uniform across the subcontinent. While northern regions, particularly Rajasthan and parts of what is now Uttar Pradesh, saw widespread adoption of purdah among elite families, southern India remained relatively insulated from these changes. The practice served multiple purposes: families sought to protect women during periods of instability, but it also became a marker of social status. Wealthy families could afford to seclude their women, as they didn’t need them for agricultural labor, making purdah a symbol of prestige even as it limited women’s mobility and opportunities.

Southern India’s literary heroines 🔗

While northern Indian women faced increasing restrictions, the southern regions told a different story. Here, women from royal and educated families made remarkable contributions to literature, leaving behind works that continue to resonate today.

Ganga Devi and her epic chronicle 🔗

Ganga Devi, a fourteenth-century princess of the Vijayanagara Empire, stands out as one of the most accomplished women writers of her time. As the wife of Kumara Kampana, she didn’t simply remain in the palace but accompanied her husband during his military expeditions. Her masterwork, Madhura Vijayam, chronicles her husband’s campaign against the Madurai Sultanate in remarkable Sanskrit verse.

What makes Ganga Devi’s work extraordinary isn’t just its literary merit but its historical value. She described political and religious conditions with such clarity that her descriptions provide a faithful portrait of affairs in those days. She was essentially a war correspondent seven centuries before modern journalism, documenting battles, political dynamics, and the impact of warfare on society. Her deep knowledge of Sanskrit literature is evident in the homage she paid to poets like Kalidasa, Bharavi, and Bhavabhuti in her work’s opening verses.

Manorama Thampurathi’s wit and wisdom 🔗

Manorama Thampurathi, a poet from Kerala, lived during a tumultuous period in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Despite facing exile due to political upheavals including Tipu Sultan’s invasions, she maintained her scholarly pursuits and became renowned for her Sanskrit scholarship. Her quick wit and literary prowess impressed even the aging Travancore Dharma Raja, leading to an intellectual relationship documented through amorous couplets exchanged between them.

Though her verses were never formally published, Manorama’s legacy continued through her students, who went on to become prominent scholars themselves. She represented the rare woman who competed successfully in the male-dominated Sanskrit literary sphere, proving that talent and determination could overcome societal barriers when circumstances allowed.

The Bhakti movement opens spiritual doors 🔗

Perhaps no movement in pre-colonial India offered women greater agency than Bhakti. This devotional movement, which emphasized personal connection with the divine over ritualistic practices, created unprecedented space for women’s spiritual expression.

Breaking barriers through devotion 🔗

The Bhakti movement provided a platform for women to express their spiritual aspirations and contribute to religious discourse, with several prominent female saints and poets emerging during this period. The movement’s core principle that devotion mattered more than caste or gender directly challenged the rigid hierarchies that constrained women’s lives.

What made Bhakti revolutionary was its accessibility. Unlike orthodox religious practices that required priestly intermediaries and knowledge of Sanskrit, Bhakti saints composed their works in regional languages, making spiritual practice available to everyone. Women could participate fully, expressing their devotion through poetry and song.

Mirabai: the princess who chose Krishna 🔗

Mirabai stood against the conventions of her times to voice her spiritual devotion for Krishna, and during the early seventeenth century, when women were considered subordinate to men in spiritual worth, she defied not only the creative canon but showed open disregard for popular customs of Rajput clans. Born a princess, she refused to commit sati after her husband’s death, insisting that Krishna was her true spouse.

Her defiance extended beyond royal expectations. According to tradition, she accepted Saint Ravidas as her guru, who belonged to the then untouchable caste of leather workers. Through her bhajans, which continue to be sung across India today, Mirabai expressed intense devotion while simultaneously challenging patriarchal norms. Her poetry became both spiritual offering and social protest.

Andal: the girl who married her god 🔗

Andal, a ninth-century Tamil poet-saint, is known for her devotional hymns to Lord Vishnu, particularly the Thiruppavai and Nachiyar Thirumozhi. According to tradition, she was discovered as an infant near a Tulsi plant and raised by a devotee. From childhood, she declared her intention to marry only Lord Ranganathan, a form of Vishnu.

Andal holds unique distinction as the only female among the twelve Alvars, the revered Vaishnavite saint-poets. Her compositions blend intense personal devotion with sophisticated poetic technique, creating works that function simultaneously as spiritual texts and literary masterpieces. Through her poetry, she claimed agency over her own destiny, choosing divine union over conventional marriage.

The cost of spiritual freedom 🔗

While the Bhakti movement offered spiritual equality, women who embraced it often paid a heavy price. Women like Meera Bai and Bahinabai faced considerable resistance because their devotion was perceived as a threat to traditional family structures. Society viewed women loving even a divine figure as transgression of dharma and social expectations.

Many women saints completely abandoned household duties or chose to live independently. Some, like Akka Mahadevi, wandered naked in quest of God, rejecting all material attachments. These choices required extraordinary courage, as they meant social ostracism and sometimes physical danger. Yet these women persisted, creating autonomous spaces through devotion and unfolding societal norms that had bound them.

Legacy of resistance and resilience 🔗

The story of women in pre-colonial India defies simple narratives. Yes, invasions brought purdah and increased restrictions, particularly in northern India. Yes, women’s mobility and opportunities were limited in ways we find difficult to imagine today. But within these constraints, women found remarkable ways to express themselves, exert influence, and claim agency.

In the south, women like Ganga Devi and Manorama Thampurathi used their privileged positions to create literature that combined artistic excellence with historical documentation. Through the Bhakti movement, women from various backgrounds, including Mirabai, Andal, and countless others whose names history has forgotten, claimed spiritual equality and used devotional poetry as a form of resistance. They proved that even in deeply patriarchal societies, determined individuals could carve out spaces for self-expression and autonomy.

These women’s legacies remind us that history is never monolithic. Even in periods of apparent oppression, creativity and resistance flourish. The poetry, the songs, the spiritual writings that these women left behind continue to inspire, demonstrating the enduring power of the human spirit to transcend limitations.

What do you think? How do the strategies women used in pre-colonial India to claim agency, whether through literature or spiritual devotion, compare to the ways women challenge restrictions today? And what can we learn from the fact that southern Indian women had greater literary freedom than their northern counterparts during this period?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purdah
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangadevi
3. https://tamilandvedas.com/2015/04/08/poetess-and-historian-gangadevi/
4. https://maddy06.blogspot.com/2015/08/manorama-thampuratti-princess-poetess.html
5. https://www.clearias.com/women-of-bhakti-movement/
6. https://oercommons.org/courseware/lesson/78484/student/?section=2
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirabai
8. https://enrouteindianhistory.com/female-bhakti-saints-and-the-challenge-to-patriarchy/