Social criticism, the Name absent
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
ऐसे संत जाले कळीं । तोंडीं तमाखूची नळी ॥1॥
स्नानसंध्या बुडविली । पुढें भांग वोडवली ॥ध्रु.॥
भांगभुकान हें साधन। पची पडे मद्यपान ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे अवघें सोंग । तेथें कैचा पांडुरंग ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
Such are the saints produced by this age of Kali: a tobacco pipe hangs from their lips. They have drowned their daily prayers and ablutions and have taken up hemp instead. Hemp-eating and intoxicants are their spiritual practice, leading them inevitably to drink liquor. Says Tuka, it is all a masquerade; how could Panduranga be found there?.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
These are the saints the age of Kali has made: a tobacco pipe hangs from the mouth. They have drowned their bath and their daily prayers, and put hemp in their place. Hemp and intoxicants are their practice; in the end it lands them in drink. Tuka says: it is all a costume. How can Panduranga be there?
What it means
Tukaram describes a degraded holiness where intoxication has replaced devotion. The pipe in the mouth, the abandoned ablutions and prayers, the hemp taken as if it were spiritual practice, the slide into liquor: these are named plainly as what the age throws up in the shape of saints. He calls the whole thing a masquerade, a performance with no inner ground. The final question is the point: where the disciplines are drowned and the senses are drugged, Panduranga, the living God, simply is not present. The poem measures any practice by whether God can actually be found in it.
Social Criticism
Rebuke of hypocrisy, caste pride, false teachers, greed, and religious pretence.
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