NDA (II) 2023 General Ability Test · Question 73 of 146

Correct — A, The Bhakti movement avoided traditions that promoted diversity. The movement did the opposite. It ran in regional languages rather than in Sanskrit alone, it drew saints from a wide spread of occupations and communities, it centred on different deities in different regions, and it carried two philosophically opposed streams at the same time — devotion to a God with form and devotion to a God without form. The remaining three statements are accurate descriptions of that plurality, so the one that claims the movement shut diversity out is the odd one and the answer.

• (b)In northern India, the Bhakti movement revolved around the worship of Rama and Krishna — This is correct, so it cannot be the answer to a NOT question. Northern devotion clustered around Rama and Krishna, the two avatars of Vishnu, in the poetry of Tulsidas, Surdas and Mirabai.
• (c)The Bhakti movement relied on the devotion of God, both with and without attributes — This is correct. The saguna stream worshipped a God with attributes and form, and the nirguna stream a formless, attributeless divine — and the two coexisted throughout the movement.
• (d)While Tulsidas represented the tradition of devotion with attributes, Sant Kabir followed the path of devotion without attributes — This is correct, and it is the standard textbook pairing. Tulsidas, author of the Ramcharitmanas, is the classic saguna poet of Rama; Kabir rejected image and form and belongs to the nirguna stream.

Bhakti holds that a direct, personal devotion to God matters more than ritual, priestly mediation or birth. It spread from the Tamil country through the medieval centuries into western and northern India, and it split into two broad paths. Saguna bhakti worships a God with attributes and form — Vishnu and his avatars Rama and Krishna, Shiva, or the Devi. Nirguna bhakti worships a divine without form or attributes, and refuses images altogether.

In a NOT question the fastest route is to confirm the statements you know are true and let the remaining one convict itself. Statements (b), (c) and (d) are all standard, and they are also mutually reinforcing — (d) is simply a worked example of (c). That leaves (a), and it also fails on its own terms, because a movement that produced both Tulsidas and Kabir, in different languages and with opposite theologies, was plainly not one that avoided diversity.

• Saguna bhakti worships God with attributes and form, most often Vishnu and his avatars, Shiva or the Devi; nirguna bhakti worships a formless, attributeless divine.
• Northern Indian bhakti devotion centred largely on Rama and Krishna.
• Tulsidas, who composed the Ramcharitmanas, belongs to the saguna stream, while Kabir belongs to the nirguna stream.
• Bhakti saints came from a wide range of occupations — Kabir was a weaver, Ravidas a cobbler, and Namdev belonged to the tailor community — and composed in regional languages.

• Missing the NOT and marking a statement that is in fact correct.
• Assuming bhakti was a single unified doctrine rather than a family of traditions.
• Swapping the two poets — Tulsidas is saguna, Kabir is nirguna, not the other way round.

Asked as a NOT-correct statement item, as a saint-to-stream matching item, or as a two-statement item on the features of saguna or nirguna bhakti.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following saints belongs to the nirguna stream of the Bhakti movement?

  • (a)Tulsidas
  • (b)Surdas
  • (c)Kabir
  • (d)Mirabai

  Answer(c) Kabir — he worshipped a formless, attributeless divine and rejected image worship.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Ramcharitmanas was composed by

  • (a)Kabir
  • (b)Tulsidas
  • (c)Surdas
  • (d)Namdev

  Answer(b) Tulsidas — his retelling of the Rama story is the best-known work of saguna bhakti in northern India.