Articulating self of feminine and as feminine a comparative study of the bani of Mirabai and Shah Hussain

Abstract

The study offers insights into the female voice in devotional expression of Mirabai and Shah Hussain and provides a broader consideration of gender in terms of femininity beyond the biological identities. This project is an attempt to explore how a man can compose and sing devotional poetry as a woman and renounce masculinity to become as woman. With the help of creative imagination and musical expression of Mirabai and Shah Hussain, the present research delves into the power of femaleness , free of ahamkar as equal to the power of willed poverty and asceticism. This study attempts to answer these questions: What qualifies female devotional voice to cut across gender divisions through the specific character of compositions of Mirabai and Shah Hussain? How the notion of femaleness becomes an ideal embodiment of devotion and an attributeless vessel or uncharacterisable medium for devotion? How Mirabai and Shah Hussain use viraha, an aspect of madhurya bhakti, as the supreme path of devotion? How the voice of virahini generalizes femaleness as the characteristic relation of all humans to God beyond their material identities of existence? The present project is unique of its kind that puts gender beyond the social and biological into the metaphysical realm. It brings into light the Indian philosophical tradition and its conceptualization of self to compare the eternal significance of the feminine voice. This study gives the required broader newlineIndian philosophical dimension to the study of devotional poetry in the times when scholars are somehow obsessed with western theories and their respective isms . newline newline