The poet saint who taught simple devotion

New Indian Express

27-07-2025

July 31 is Tulsidas Jayanti, honouring the 528th birth anniversary of the influential poet-philosopher of Varanasi. The 16th-century author of the Ramcharitmanas wrote his 'people's Ramayana' in Awadhi, the everyday dialect of his region, to simplify matters for the common person. Tulsidas, as noted by Ramayana scholars, also observed in his day that the public was prone to be easily impressed and misled by all kinds of fantastical ascetics and their doctrines.
He disapproved of yogis who grew long nails, bound their hair in coils, wore strange, frightening ornaments, and, so to speak, dressed for the fairground. He is noted as saying in another work, the Vinaya Patrika in Brijbhasha, 'Bahumat muni bahu panth puranani, jahan-tahan jhagaro soh (The seers profess many opinions, there are many old stories about many paths to salvation, and there are quarrels all over the place)'. He submitted that real religion was much less complicated, that it was a direct connection between a soul and God, whom his guru personally taught him to see as Ram.
Therefore, Tulsi's repeated spiritual advice for people living out their lives in this particular Kalyug was brief and straightforward: 'Kalyug jog na jagya na gnana / Ek aadhar Ram gun gaana (In Kalyug, neither austerity, nor sacrifice, nor deep knowledge is required / Singing in praise of Ram is the only path to salvation).'
The public could not resist the triple impact of Tulsi's case, the heartbreaking appeal of Valmiki's story that Tulsi retold with his own twists, such as the Lakshman rekha incident, and Tulsi's poetry, which seemed simple yet was profoundly musical and meaningful. The history of religion in North India forever changed with the advent of the Ramcharitmanas.
However, Tulsi's Ram is a faultless figure in monochrome gold, unlike Valmiki's human-textured hero. So, it strikes me that since everything has a socio-historic context, was Tulsi's Ram the deeply internalised response of North Indian Hinduism to the monotheism of the invaders? The political attempts today to make Ram a warlike rallying point suggest such a possibility. It may be something to consider and consciously delink from our attachment to the Ramcharitmanas, for it is not poor Tulsi's fault in the least.