Sant Tukaram

The story of Tukaram begins not with him but with his ancestors. His family, the Ambile clan of the More lineage, had been settled in the village of Dehu on the banks of the Indrayani River for eight generations. Their forefather Vishwambhar Buva was a man of such extraordinary devotion that he walked two hundred and fifty kilometres to Pandharpur twice every month to observe ekadashi at the feet of Lord Vitthal. Vishwambhar built the family temple in Dehu, and from that day forward, the Ambile household breathed the air of the Varkari tradition.

Tukaram's father Bolhoba carried forward this devotion while also serving as the village Mahajan, the hereditary revenue collector and moneylender. His mother Kanakai was a pious woman. The family was comfortable, if not wealthy. They were of the Kunbi caste, classified as Shudra in the orthodox hierarchy, but respected in the village for their generosity, their pilgrimage tradition, and their honest dealings.

Tukaram was the second of three sons. His elder brother Savji and younger brother Kanhoba would both play roles in the family story. But it was Tukaram, quiet and inward-looking from boyhood, who would carry the family's devotion beyond anything Vishwambhar could have imagined.

When Tukaram was barely seventeen, both his parents died, leaving him to manage the family business, the agricultural lands, and the responsibilities of the Mahajan office. He was married around this time to Rakhubai, and they had a son named Santu. For a few years, the young householder struggled to hold things together.

Then came the catastrophe. The great famine of 1629 to 1630 swept across Maharashtra like a scythe. Crops failed. Rivers dried. The price of grain rose beyond the reach of ordinary people. In the Ambile household, Rakhubai and the boy Santu died of starvation. The family's money-lending business, built over generations, collapsed under the weight of unrecoverable debts. The village council, seeing that Tukaram could no longer fulfil his duties, stripped him of the Mahajan title. The humiliation was total.

Tukaram later wrote of this period with a rawness that still stings: he was driven to the edge of despair, contemplating death. The world had taken everything from him. What remained was a question: if this life holds nothing, what does?

In the wake of ruin, Tukaram married again. His second wife, Jijabai (also called Avali), was a capable, practical woman who could not understand why her husband had lost all interest in commerce. She would become one of the recurring characters in his abhangas: the frustrated wife who berates the saint for his otherworldliness while the children go hungry. She was, in her own way, devoted; she carried his meals up the hill each day regardless of weather. But she wanted grain in the house, clothes for the children, and a husband who came home at night.

Tukaram, however, had already turned. He repaired the neglected family shrine to Vitthal, and began spending long hours there in prayer and song. Then he disappeared into the forests of Bhamnath hill. For fifteen days he sat without food, without water, without sleep, calling on God with the desperation of a man who had lost everything else. On the fifteenth day, according to tradition, Vithoba appeared before him in His true form. Tukaram returned to Dehu a changed man. He gathered every promissory note, every account book in the house, and threw them into the Indrayani River. The merchant was dead. The poet was born.

Every sant needs a guru, and Tukaram received his in the most extraordinary way. His guru, Babaji Chaitanya (also called Raghava Chaitanya or Keshava Chaitanya), had already left his physical body by the time he appeared to Tukaram in a dream. In the vision, Babaji imparted the mantra 'Ram Krishna Hari,' containing the holy names of Rama, Krishna, and Hari, all names of Vishnu. This posthumous, supernatural initiation was itself a statement: the guru-disciple relationship transcends the body.

In the same period, Tukaram received another vision in which the great Varkari saint Namdev and Lord Vitthal Himself appeared together. Namdev, who had vowed to compose one billion abhangas for Vitthal, told Tukaram that the remaining verses were his to write. Vitthal stroked his back and said: 'By My order, now compose verses. The limit of them is a hundred million.' When Tukaram awoke, his life's work was clear.

What followed was a torrent of poetry unlike anything Maharashtra had heard. Tukaram composed his abhangas in colloquial Marathi, the language of farmers, traders, and housewives, not in Sanskrit, the language of priests and scholars. He sang in the marketplaces, on the roads to Pandharpur, in the courtyards of the poor. His signature line, 'Tuka mhane' ('Says Tuka'), closed each poem like a seal.

The poems were startlingly direct. He called himself a dog at Vitthal's door, a beggar, a fool. He mocked the pretensions of Brahmin ritualists and the hollow piety of the worldly. He confessed his own weakness with a candour that was itself a form of prayer. He wrote of marketplace dealings, of debts and grain, of a wife beating him with sugarcane, of children weeping from hunger. And through all of it, he wove the name of Vitthal like a golden thread.

Over the course of his life, Tukaram composed approximately 4,500 to 4,600 abhangas. They cover the full range of human experience: anguish, longing, ecstasy, social criticism, philosophical inquiry, confession, and the fierce, tender intimacy of a soul speaking directly to God. Dilip Chitre, his greatest modern translator, compared his stature in Marathi literature to Shakespeare in English or Goethe in German.

Tukaram's growing fame brought him enemies. The Brahmin establishment could tolerate a Shudra singing devotional songs in the village square. What they could not tolerate was a Shudra expounding the principles of the Vedas and Upanishads in the vernacular, drawing crowds away from the orthodox priesthood.

The leader of the opposition was Rameshwar Shastri, one of the most erudite Brahmins of the region. He pronounced that Tukaram's poems were 'a deliberate attempt to explain the principles of the Shrutis from a Shudra's point of view' and that this was totally unacceptable. He not only forbade Tukaram from writing any more poems but ordered that all existing manuscripts be destroyed.

Tukaram, who held all Brahmins in reverence, did not resist. He brought out every manuscript from his home, bound them together, tied a large stone around the bundle, and threw it into the Indrayani River. The Brahmins taunted him: if he were truly God's beloved, let the manuscripts return on their own.

Tukaram sat down on the riverbank and began to fast. For thirteen days he neither ate nor drank, ceaselessly calling on Vitthal. On the third day, Krishna appeared to him in the form of a child and said: 'Quiet your mind. I will rid you of any grievous calamity.' On the thirteenth day, the manuscripts floated to the surface of the Indrayani, dry, intact, untouched by the water. Even the river would not destroy what God had inspired.

When Rameshwar Shastri heard what had happened, he was shattered. He wrote a letter of apology and became one of Tukaram's most ardent disciples, later composing famous works in praise of the very poet he had tried to silence.

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, the founder of the Maratha Empire, was a contemporary of Tukaram and recognized his spiritual greatness. On one occasion, Shivaji traveled from his fortress at Sinhagad to visit the saint at Poona. He arrived covertly, wary of Mughal authorities, and found Tukaram in the midst of a kirtan.

The king presented Tukaram with a shining plate of silver filled with gold and silver coins, then prostrated himself before the saint. Tukaram looked at the gold and began to tremble. He stood up and walked away. His disciples explained to the bewildered king: Tukaram has always welcomed you when you come alone. But the gold is repulsive to him.

When Tukaram returned, he told Shivaji: 'We do not need a store of money. We need Vitthal only. Your gold is like pebbles to us, like beef to a Vaishnava. Keep it in your treasury; the poor and the kingdom will benefit.' He then offered the king the only gift he considered worth giving: spiritual counsel. Wear a tulsi rosary. Observe ekadashi. Consider yourself the slave of Vithoba.

When Shivaji, moved by the encounter, expressed a desire to renounce his kingdom and become a sannyasi, Tukaram counselled against it. A king's dharma is to protect his people. Renunciation for Shivaji would be an abandonment of duty. The king left humbled, and after Tukaram's departure from the world, he sought guidance from Samartha Ramdas.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Tukaram's life is that he remained a householder throughout. He did not renounce the world in the formal sense. He had a wife, six children, a broken-down family business, and a village full of people who depended on him for spiritual sustenance while his own household went hungry.

The Bhaktavijaya preserves stories of extraordinary domestic friction. Once, a farmer gave Tukaram a bundle of sugarcane. Instead of bringing it home, Tukaram distributed most of it to the village children. When Jijabai found only one piece remaining, she flew into a rage and beat him across the back with it. The sugarcane broke into three pieces. Tukaram, unperturbed, said: 'Now it is equally divided. Your portion is in your hand. Two have fallen down, and I shall lovingly divide them between myself and the children.'

On another occasion, Jijabai went to the Vitthal temple in a fury, intending to strike the deity's feet. 'There is not a kernel of grain in the house,' she cried. 'The children weep and weep.' According to the Bhaktavijaya, Rukmini, Krishna's consort, appeared in disguise and pacified her with a garment, a jacket, and a handful of silver coins.

These stories are not incidental. They reveal that Tukaram's path was the path of the householder: devotion woven into the fabric of daily life, not separated from it. His teaching was that you do not need to flee to the forest. God is in the kitchen, in the marketplace, in the argument with your wife. The Varkari path he championed was, and remains, a householder's path.

In 1650, in the forty-second year of his life (some accounts say forty-eighth), Tukaram felt that his work in this world was complete. In his final days, he composed farewell abhangas, asking his disciples to maintain the holy name and seek blessings. He repeatedly invited his followers to accompany him to 'Vaikuntha,' and even invited Jijabai, who declined. She was pregnant with their youngest son, Narayan, and the family buffalo was also about to deliver.

On the day of departure, Tukaram led a kirtan near the Nandurki tree in Dehu. Among the witnesses were Saint Niloba Maharaj and Rameshwar Pant. As the chanting of 'Vitthal Vitthal' reached its crescendo, Tukaram's voice suddenly ceased. When his disciples searched for him, he was gone. No body was found. No trace remained.

The Varkari tradition holds that Vitthal arrived on Garuda and carried Tukaram bodily to Vaikuntha, the abode of Vishnu. Three days after his disappearance, his veena and cymbals fell from the sky into the hands of his followers, a signal to continue the kirtan, not to mourn. No samadhi exists for Tukaram, unlike other saints, because there was no body to inter.

Scholars have offered other explanations. Some suggest he was murdered by enemies. Others simply note that he 'disappeared' and leave the mystery open. What is beyond dispute is that from that day to this, no comparable spiritual personality has emerged in the Varkari tradition. Bahinabai, the Brahmin poetess who was his contemporary and devotee, described the tradition as a temple built across centuries: 'Jnanadev laid the foundation. Namdev built the walls. Eknath raised the central pillar. And Tukaram became the crown, the kalash, the finial at the very top.'