“Among the 12th century Shiva Sharana poets, I always have been moved and fascinated by Allama Prabhu and Akka Mahadevi. If Allama quickened my understanding of advaya or non-dual philosophy, Akka had me wishing I was born a woman,” writes Mukunda Rao, the author of “Sky Clad: The extraordinary life and times of Akka Mahadevi”, in his Preface. To Akka Mahadevi, he further says, the body was a fundamental truth unfortunately ignored in most narratives on spirituality.” His earlier book, “The Buddha: An alternative narrative of his life and teaching”, also emphatically argues that “the concept of the body is altogether missing in the discourse of spirituality”. Continuing from there, this work on Akka brings body to the centre of his narrative, yet again. With two plays, two novels, a reader on the most influential thinker U.G. Krishnamurti, Mukunda Rao has written eight books in all.
Excerpts from an interview with the author:
In the huge pantheon of Vachanakaras, you chose to write about Akka Mahadevi. What drew you to her?
She is the most compelling figure, not only because she walked naked, ‘breast to breast with the cosmos’, but also because she opened up a radically new dimension to our understanding of spirituality, which, unfortunately, has been lost in traditional translation. To Akka body was not a prison of the soul, rather, it was the seat of Divinity, the crucible of truth. This should make us review our traditional religious discourses where the body is seen as an enemy of spirituality.
And, I must also point out that, although the vachana movement forms a compelling background of her life. We also need to see her outside the framework of vachana movement to be able to appreciate her extraordinary journey, which, according to me, puts her up there on the spiritual map of the world.
The body is central to Akka Mahadevi's spiritual quest. As you write, she doesn't live in a denial of her body, but celebrates it. How did the other spiritual traditions respond to the idea of body as a seat of spirituality?
With the exception of certain streams within Hinduism and Buddhism, such as the Tantra school of thought, almost all the religious/spiritual discourses—including Christian and Islamic traditions—are hopelessly caught in the dichotomy or dualism between spirit and matter, body and soul, soul and God, male and female (wherein the male principle is privileged), spirituality and materialism and so on.
In these religious discourses the body is seen as a sort of ‘enemy’, a dangerous customer, who needs to be controlled and disciplined in one’s spiritual enterprise. However, the attempts made either in the past or in the present to overcome this duality, to remedy this defective view, have been unfortunately subsumed under discourses which were and are mainly framed in psychological terms, so much so that the body continues to be regarded as an obstacle to be overcome in one’s spiritual quest. This must change. But I tell you, when you knock off these dualities or binaries—which produces false consciousness — most of these religions or spiritualities would collapse and the religious gurus would be unemployed.
There were 30 other women Vachanakaras during her period, and those like Bonta Devi who were considered to be on par with Allama. What made Akka so special?
Unfortunately we don’t know much about Bonta Devi and other women saranas of the times, certainly not as much as we know of Akka. However, in hindsight, we might say that she was the most remarkable one among the Shiva saranes, who blazed a path all her own. She was the kind of light you could not hide under a bushel!
Akkamahadevi was born with an instinct for the absolute, and her entire life's journey, if one may say so, is a movement towards attaining it. Often, we tend to read Akka as a rebel against patriarchy, as a radical feminist etc. Are these readings complete?
Yes, she had an instinct for oneness, unitary consciousness. And she was certainly a rebel of an extraordinary order and there’s no problem in calling her a radical feminist. A genuine spiritual person is the ultimate rebel! For she rejects all man-made social norms, even the cumbersome clothes. Patriarchy is not only oppressive of women, it has been the source of fictitious binaries that divide up life into almost irreconcilable conflicts. It continues to be the bane of humankind. Patriarchy is rank bourgeois and radical feminists identified it as such. Akka knew it in her bones, as it were, and challenged the monster by walking naked. And, eventually, went beyond gender.
What does the term “brahminical order” encapsulate?
By the term ‘brahminical’ we don’t necessarily refer to Brahmin caste or those born in Brahmin family. That would be silly and incorrect. It only means an ideology, such as, for instance, the terrible caste system, pancha-sutakas, or the five kinds of pollution or impurities associated with women, temple worship and priestly class, and spiritual authority linked with Brahmin caste and the Vedas. Over several centuries, kings, rulers, and even people cutting across all castes have been aggressive supporters of this ideology.
Is God as husband belief very typical of Veerashaivism?
It is typical of the way of bhakti. Even men bhaktas take on feminine roles, speak through female personae and yearn for their male god as women do for their lovers. The strong sexual imagery in their compositions — of both men and women — is actually indicative of the deep yearning for mystical union, the great urge to self-transcendence in physical terms. The physical becomes the soul of the ‘metaphysical’. In the way of bhakti, the poet joins the bodily experience with the transcendental so that the spirit speaks through the ‘flesh’.
Women saints perhaps occupy a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, they reject patriarchal values, but within their spiritual quest they seem to pursue them. For instance, they call themselves sharana sati , or the brides of God etc. But there is also a point where they cross this binary. In saints like Akka and Meera you can actually miss this transcendence. Akka writes in worldly language, as in “Ganda Neenu Hendatiyaanu Mattobbarillayya” and with equal intensity writes of surrender and aikya, as in “Teraniya Hula”. Would you explain this process from the bhava to the anubhaava?
Tradition talks of varieties of bhakti, but mainly there are two strands to it: seeking and being with God within the circle of bhava. It is a devotional relationship between devotee and God and remains so till the end. The bridge is never crossed, the relationship is never transcended, although there may be sometimes a flash of an urge to transcend the separation.
Mira, Avvaiyar, the Alvars, and the Dasas are good examples of such bhakti immersed in smarana , archana and sakhya . Then there is the other kind of bhakti, what you call seeking and becoming God . This may start as intense love for a personal God, characterised by viraha, forlornness, or an acute sense of separation, which eventually ends in absolute surrender, and finishes in the dissolution of the relationship and realisation of oneness. Akka Mahadevi, Allama Prabhu, Lalleshwari and Kabir exemplified this kind of transcendental bhakti. In short, it is the journey from bhava, emotions, relationship, to anubhaava , unmediated vision of reality or truth, where there is no more seeking, no separation, and duality disappears. We don’t know how exactly this happens and therefore, you can never explain this phenomenon in definite terms.
As regards women saints rejecting patriarchal values and yet pursuing them does appear to be a paradoxical situation.
You have to live and move in a society shaped by patriarchy. But render patriarchy toothless, it can’t bite you anymore, because you are inwardly free of it. Akka and Lalleshwari are typical examples here, and eventually they moved beyond all binaries.
So much has been written about Akka in Kannada. What were your fears when you set out writing this book?
Writing about someone who was an embodiment of fearlessness, I could not afford to be bothered by any kind of fear or anxiety. I have taken firm positions; for instance, I do not think you would want to see Akka as belonging to Virashaiva faith.
Like Allama Prabhu, Akka Mahadevi, too, just cut loose from religious initiations and stages of becoming and came upon that which has no name and form. Her bhakti was the path, her inner voice the guru, and she promptly moved from bhakti to arivu – awareness that all is one. To read and narrate the story of Akka Mahadevi within the framework of Virashaivism, therefore, would be analogous to writing about Gandhiji within the framework of the Congress Party.
By the way, Basavanna didn’t call himself or his fellow bhaktas as Virashaivas or Lingayats. The term ‘Virashaiva’ was first used by Bhimakavi in his Basava Purana , a 14th C text, and then later by the authors of Shunya Sampadane . And the name stuck.
Your research is exhaustive... how long did it take to complete the book?
I had to of course read several books in the original, in Kannada, especially the different versions of Shunya Sampadane . But I am more an intuitive writer than one steered by the study of books. It took a long time to finish the book. Sky-Clad is more an inspired narrative than a studied historical work. There was joy, and agony, too, because you wanted to get under the skin of Akka and become her.
