Bhakti and Nationalism in the Poetry of Subramania Bharati

Abstract

Subramania Bharati (1882-1921), known simply as Bharatiyar, was an "extraordinary and prophetic poet" (Ramanujan, 1999, p. 343) whom Tamils in India and beyond continue to look upon as the nationalist bard par excellence. Though Bharatiyar's stature equals that of a Poet Laureate among Tamil speakers, he has remained so little known beyond that world that the Government of India in the centenary year of the poet's birth took steps to remedy the situation. The 1982 celebrations were marked by an issue of coins depicting symbols of national integration (a theme dear to Bharatiyar's heart) and by the publication in English of a translation of his selected works by eminent poets and scholars. The volume includes a color photograph of Bh?rata M?t?, a terracotta statuette designed and commissioned by the poet during his exile in Pondicherry. It shows a sorrowful, youthful, yet maternal woman, crowned, her hair streaming across to mark the Himalayas and her s?n drapes like contours outlining the extent of British imperial rule, from the North Western Frontier to the southern tip of Burma. Though Bharatiyar's image of Mother India coincides with British imperial territory, it draws on indigenous traditions and taps into long-estab lished religious sentiment: into a Hindu sacred geography that encompassed the Indus River region and into that extension of Hindu Tamil religion and culture represented by the imperialist adventures of the Cola emperors in Southeast Asia. The title Bharati (Tamil, P?rati), meaning the "learned one," was bestowed on him at the age of twelve in recognition of his precocious gifts, by an assembly of poets and scholars in Ettayapuram, where he lived and where his father served the local chieftain. A Br?hmana by birth, Bharatiyar was steeped in a traditional Hindu spirituality centered on the Vedas and the Upanisads. Yet at an early age he was drawn to Tamil poetry, which he often read surreptitiously, and was caught up in the new Tamil literary renaissance initiated by Saiva Siddh?nta revivalists of