Movement

The bhakti movement

The movements of loving devotion to God that spread across India from the sixth century, in the languages of the people.

Also called Bhakti, Hindu devotional movement

Introduction

Bhakti, “devotion” or “loving participation”, names a way to God through love, surrender and worship, open to everyone regardless of caste or sex. Its roots are in the Bhagavad Gītā and the Purāṇas, but from the sixth century onward it became a series of popular movements, carried by poet-saints who sang in the languages of the people rather than in Sanskrit.

The bhakti poets addressed God in personal forms, as Viṣṇu, Krishna or Rāma, as Śiva, or as the Goddess, and some, the sants of North India, as a God without form. They described the soul’s relation to God in human terms: as servant, friend, child, or lover, and they gave voice to longing, separation, joy and surrender.

Bhakti often challenged the authority of Brahmins, ritual and caste: many of its saints were women, outcastes or members of low castes, and its communities gathered around song, chanting of the divine names and shared worship. Its theologians, such as Rāmānuja and the followers of Caitanya, gave it philosophical form, holding that love of God, not knowledge alone, is the highest path.

History

Historical

The movement began in the Tamil South between the sixth and ninth centuries, with the Āḻvārs, poet-saints of Viṣṇu, and the Nāyaṉārs, poet-saints of Śiva. Their hymns were collected and became scripture. Rāmānuja, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, gave Vaiṣṇava devotion a philosophical foundation in Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta.

From the thirteenth century the movement spread across India: in Maharashtra with Jñāneśvar, Nāmdev and later Tukārām; in North India with Rāmānanda, Kabīr, Ravidās, Sūrdās, Mīrābāī and Tulsīdās, whose Rāmcaritmānas became the most loved text of Hindi-speaking India; in Bengal with Caitanya, whose followers founded the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition. The Sikh Gurus drew on the same devotional world.

Bhakti remains the most widespread form of Hindu religious life. In 1966 A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness in New York, carrying Caitanya’s tradition to the West.

Historians have debated how far bhakti was a single movement and how far it challenged the social order. Some saints rejected caste outright; others accepted it while insisting that before God it counts for nothing. Its literature, in Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Hindi, Bengali and other languages, is among the great bodies of religious poetry in the world, and its songs are still sung daily in homes and temples across India.

6th–9th c.The Āḻvārs and Nāyaṉārs in the Tamil South
11th–12th c.Rāmānuja’s Viśiṣṭādvaita
13th–17th c.Bhakti spreads in Maharashtra, the North and Bengal
16th c.Caitanya in Bengal; Mīrābāī in Rajasthan
1966The International Society for Krishna Consciousness is founded

Major thinkers

Key concepts

Important texts

Convergence and divergence

Resemblance and difference, given equal room. Each note is marked with the kind of statement it makes.

Areas of convergence

Prema, with Sufism
Scholarship
The bhakti poets and the Sufis of India shared a language of love, longing and the remembrance of the divine name, and influenced one another, especially in the North.

Areas of divergence

Bhakti, with Advaita Vedānta
Historical
Many bhakti theologians rejected the Advaita goal of merging into an impersonal Brahman, preferring the eternal loving service of a personal God.

Cite this entry

Chicago (bibliography): “The bhakti movement.” Tradition. The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society. Last modified November 7, 2026. https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/traditions/bhakti-movement.
Chicago (note): “The bhakti movement,” tradition, The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society, last modified November 7, 2026, https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/traditions/bhakti-movement.
MLA: “The bhakti movement.” The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society, 7 Nov. 2026, www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/traditions/bhakti-movement.
BibTeX: @misc{traditions-bhakti-movement, title = {{The bhakti movement}}, howpublished = {The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society}, note = {Tradition. Last modified November 7, 2026}, year = {2026}, url = {https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/traditions/bhakti-movement} }

Parallels

Schools and branches

Vārkarī TraditionMovementThe Marathi devotional movement of the god Viṭhobā of Pandharpur, carried by its poet-saints and its great annual pilgrimage.