Singing God from the Margins: Kumāran Āśān’s Strotṛakṛitikal and Bhakti in Malayāl̥am

Mahākavi Kumāran Āśān (1873-1924), a great modern Malayāḷam poet, was a member of a low Īzhava caste in colonial Kerala. During this time, “unapproachability” and “untouchability” were practiced in Kerala, and individuals from the lower caste experienced inhuman treatment, leaving them vulnerable and “incomplete.” The imagination of “completeness” for individuals concerned Āśān because he understood the “incompleteness” that lower caste people experienced through the practice of unapproachability and untouchability in Kerala during his time. For him, there was no conflict between the religious quest and social liberation.

Asan grew up experiencing caste discrimination in Kerala. During his time, education and religious spaces were inaccessible to people of lower castes due to strict caste-oriented boundaries. When Āśān first encountered Śrī Nārāyana Guru, pioneer of the socioreligious reform movement in Kerala, at the age of seventeen, he sought discipleship under Guru. Under Guru’s guidance, he studied extensively philosophical disciplines, including Vedāntaśāstra and Yogaśāstra, understanding the importance of knowledge and solidifying his devotional attitude towards the deity. That year, Āśān wrote several devotional poems: Subramanyaśatakam, Śivastotramāla, Bhaktivilāpam, Śivasurabhi, Kaminigrhaṇam, Vibhūti, Paramapañcakam, Anugrahaparamadaśakam, Nijānandānubhūti, and Nijānandavilāsam, all of which embody Śaiva *bhakti*. As a result of inaccessibility to education in Kerala, Āśān lived in Bangalore with Dr. Palpu, a prominent person in Mysore Services, who himself was from the Īzhava caste and was denied admission on a caste basis into a local government school but was able to gain admission into an English school founded in Trivandrum.

Later, Āśān went to Calcutta; there, he studied *nyāyaśāstra* (the science of logic) and *advaita* (non-dualism) philosophy, studies shifting focus from *bhakti* to jñāna in Āśān’s thought. During his time in Bengal, he was influenced by significant figures Ramakrishna Paramahansa (1836-1886), Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), and Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), and was swept along in these powerful currents of spirituality and literature. He must have also understood the literary changes in the works of Michael Madhusudhan Dutt (1824-1873), which he later employed in his poetic compositions (Pati 2019).

After returning to Kerala in 1900, he joined Guru’s socioreligious reform movement in its quest to unify humanity, transcending caste and creed boundaries. Asan served as the founding general secretary and published the monthly journal Vivekōdayam. During this time, his poetics changed, incorporating Western elements into his traditional Sanskrit and Malayalam poems, appealing to a much larger audience. Perhaps this was a way of aspiring for unity and “completeness” at a literary level, imagining unity and “completeness” at the socioreligious level. His poetical works reflect all these insights from Sanskrit and Western texts and traditions. They can be classified into three broad categories: devotional poems (Stōtṛakṛitikal), lyric/narrative poems (khanda kāvyam), and short poems.

For example, one of Āśān’s poems in the Stōtṛakṛitikal, Vibhūti (holy ashes), consists of five verses and echoes the idea of surrendering at Śiva’s feet. Vibhūti abounds in references to god’s compassion and protection. In Malayāḷam, *kāruṇyam* or *daya*, translated as compassion, grace, or mercy, are interchangeable. This compassion or grace liberates the devotee from *karma/samsāra* as per the Tamil Śaiva Siddhānta. There is a fourfold, four-stage hierarchical path of devotion—acts of service, worship, spiritual discipline, and ultimately, knowledge, activated at each stage by the Lord’s grace, culminating in the soul’s liberation from the bondage of *karma* (Peterson 1991, 17-18). Vibhūti depicts Śiva as the creator, sustainer, and the Compassionate One, full of grace. Grace is essential to liberating the soul from the bondage of *karma*. In this instance, he refers to Pārvatī with her epithet Lokeśvari, the Goddess of the universe. The union between Śiva and Pārvatī, similar to the union between *prakṛti*, nature, and *puruṣa*, human, embodies the imagined union between the divine and human among humans. However, such union can be understood as tantric practices addressing the unity of *prakṛti* and *puruṣa* as male and female, pure and impure, knowledge and action.

Āśān’s narrative voice in Vibhūti considers himself as the ignorant one, someone who is singing and shouting, yearning for knowledge and union that comes from surrendering at Śiva’s feet. Śiva is portrayed as the one who strides through the three realms of this universe, and the holy Ash on the forehead are steps towards liberation from the bondage of *karma*. The poem concludes with the poet caressed in the fullness of Śiva’s grace. This poem personifies union and “completeness.” “Completeness” is achieved through knowledge of the deity, which can facilitate individuals to realize the sameness of each other. Āśān’s Stōtṛakṛitikal is an “epistemological site enacting religious praxis” where he “appropriates, engages, experiences, and embodies” devotion (Holdrege 2015). It is an active participation between the devotee and deity, a site for wonder and self-expression that demonstrates the usefulness of employing the communicative and experiential models of interpretation (Pechilis 1999 and 2012). Though Āśān’s Stōtṛakṛitikal reflects the same motifs as those composed by upper-caste *bhakti* poets, it contributes to *bhakti* discourse, attesting that *bhakti* includes the voices of those on the margins of society and their instrumentality in making the divine palpable and of a unified imagined society in Kerala.