baul fakir sahaj sai

Trying to create a space where documents and texts on the sahajiya sects of India, mainly Bengal, can be archived and discussed. The sects like sahajiya, baul, fakir, kartabhaja, have been often inappropriately described as obscure religious cults. Most of them are believed to share two key aspects: protestant subaltern socio-religious ethos, and sexo-yogic practice; both being reflected in the songs, which form the textual corpus of these communities and expressions of their life worlds.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Rabindranath Tagore on Bauls

"One day I chanced to hear a song from a beggar belonging to the Baul sect of Bengal…What struck me in this simple song was a religious expression that was neither grossly concrete, full of crude details, nor metaphysical in its rarefied transcendentalism… "

Rabindranath Tagore, ‘The Man of My Heart’, Religion of Man, Hibbert Lectures for 1930.