Janabai and Gangakhed of Das Ganu: Towards ethnic unity and religious cohesion in a time of transition

The Varkari tradition of the Marathi-language area of Western India is characterised by devotion to the god Vitthal of Pandharpur as well as the medieval saint-poets who praised him in songs and longed for his company. Modern narratives present Janabai, a poetess who lived presumably during the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries, as one of the Varkari saint-poets. Her rise to fame started in the last decade of the nineteenth century, and by the 1920s, although of obscure origin, she had been geographically pinned to Gangakhed on the Godavari River. The association with this tiny settlement in Marathwada was established by the famous Das Ganu, an itinerant minstrel and preacher. Janabai’s own celebrity reached its peak by the 1960s, when a sign of sanctity in the form of symbolic sandals was installed at the site which went on to become her temple in Gangakhed. In 1975 a new procession, that of Saint Janabai, was added to the list of more than 100 processions travelling at the same time each year to Pandharpur. This article looks into the process of nationalist ‘awakening’ and the manner in which fostering bonds of ethnic unity and religious cohesion have been essential for shaping shared identity. The Varkari tradition and its poets, including Janabai, became the main tools for the creation of a Marathi-language cultural environment and for the domestication of the terrain by and through the power of comprehensible Hindu symbols.