Abstract
Throughout the globe (particularly in the global South), religious orthodoxy and their discriminatory intolerances are negatively impacting religious freedom of underserved populations, particularly those who practice/follow alternate spiritual praxis, like the Sufi and Bhakti performers from rural and geographically remote spaces of South Asia. Hindu and Islamic fundamentalist discourses/doctrines are propagating their conservative religious agendas and thereby creating tensions and separatism across the subcontinent. Such religious extremism is responsible for the threatening and even murdering of nonsectarian torchbearers, and their free thoughts. This study focused on various alternate communication strategies espoused by Sufi and bhakti performers and followers in order to negotiate and overcome their marginalized existence as well as to promote the plurality of voices and values in the society. This article identified the following communication strategies—innovative usages of language of inversion or enigmatic language; strategic camouflaging of authors’/writers’ identity, and intergenerational communication of discourses and spiritual values to ensure freedom and survival of their traditions.
Highlights
Throughout the globe, religious dogma and orthodoxies are negatively affecting, and even sometimes destroying, religious freedom of underserved and marginalized populations, those who practice and follow alternate spiritual praxis (Mamoon 2008; Robinson 2001)
By saying ‘bhakti’, this paper primarily focuses on nirgun bhakti
Several key words used in the search were Sufi, Bhakti, Baul, Fakir, Jogi, Nath, etc
Summary
Throughout the globe, religious dogma and orthodoxies are negatively affecting, and even sometimes destroying, religious freedom of underserved and marginalized populations, those who practice and follow alternate spiritual praxis (Mamoon 2008; Robinson 2001). S&B poets and singers are painstakingly playing crucial roles in creating a more humane and religiously tolerant society (Saikia 2008), in spite of active opposition and oppression from the dominant religious and sociocultural institutions (Amandeep 2010; Grover 2015). While their freedom, voices, and discourses were continually erased and delegitimized in the discursive spaces, the S&B artists and their followers learned over time to adopt and practice alternate communication strategies for their survival and spiritual sustenance (Novetzke and Patton 2008). Creative usage of language of inversion or enigmatic language; strategic camouflage of writers’/performers’ identities and discourses from the mainstream; intergenerational communication of discourses and values to ensure survival of cultural traditions
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