Mirabai: Saint, Rebel, or Both?

A Critical Exploration of Devotion and Dissent

1. Introduction: The Enigma of Mirabai

Mirabai, the 16th-century Rajput princess and Bhakti poet-saint, occupies a unique position in South
Asian cultural and religious memory. Celebrated for her passionate devotion to Krishna and her
defiance of patriarchal norms, Mirabai’s life and poetry have inspired both veneration and debate.
Scholars, hagiographers, feminists, and cultural critics have long contested whether she should be
primarily understood as a saintly devotee (sant) or a social rebel. While the two categories have
often been presented as mutually exclusive, this essay argues that Mirabai’s sanctity and rebellion
are not only compatible but also mutually reinforcing. Her spiritual quest was inseparable from her
socio-political dissent, and it is this fusion that gives her persona enduring cultural resonance.

2. Historical Context: Bhakti, Gender, and Caste

Mirabai emerged during the Bhakti movement, a pan-Indian devotional phenomenon that
emphasized personal devotion to a chosen deity, often transcending caste and gender hierarchies.
However, Bhakti did not operate outside existing social structures. For women like Mirabai,
participating in public devotional practices was itself a radical act, especially within the Rajput
aristocracy that strictly regulated female behavior.

Born into the Rathore clan of Merta in Rajasthan, Mirabai was married to Bhojraj, the son of Rana
Sanga of Mewar. Her marriage, according to many sources, was politically strategic rather than
emotional. Widowed early, Mirabai refused to perform sati, the traditional self-immolation of
widows, and chose instead a life of Krishna bhakti, marked by singing, dancing, and mingling with
sadhus. These actions, particularly her refusal to conform to expectations of widowhood and her
rejection of royal decorum, positioned her outside the bounds of acceptable Rajput womanhood.
Her caste privilege offered her some protection, but also made her non-conformity even more
scandalous in elite circles.

3. The Early Sources: Fragmented Memories and Hagiographic Silhouettes

Unlike other Bhakti saints such as Kabir or Ravidas, Mirabai left behind no definitive autobiographical
record. What survives are a corpus of devotional padas (verses), hagiographical accounts written
after her death, and regional oral traditions. The earliest references to her are sparse. Nābhādās’s
Bhaktamāl (c. 1600), a canonical compilation of Bhakti saints, includes a few lines praising her
devotion to Giridhar (Krishna), noting her disregard for familial and societal shame. He writes, “Mīrā
left behind worldly shame and family chains and praised Girdhar,” emphasizing her detachment and
fearlessness.

It is only with Priyādās’s 18th-century Bhaktirasabodhinī, a commentary on Nābhādās, that a more

elaborate narrative begins to form. Here, Mirabai is described as a princess from Merta, married into
the Mewar royal family, who brought with her a statue of Krishna and refused to bow to the family
deity. Her association with sadhus, her miraculous survival after being poisoned, and her eventual
merging with Krishna’s idol in Dwarka all become part of her hagiographic image.

These narratives are devotional, not historical, shaped by religious ideology and the needs of
particular sects. They often shift blame for Mirabai’s persecution onto evil in-laws or court ministers
rather than her husband, thereby preserving her chastity and aligning her more closely with saintly
purity than political rebellion.

4. Mirabai’s Poetry: Love, Longing, and Resistance

Mirabai’s poetry, composed in Brajbhasha with Rajasthani influences, is central to understanding her
dual persona. Her songs focus on viraha (longing), prem (divine love), and bhakti (devotion), often
expressed in the voice of a gopī-like lover yearning for Krishna. Yet embedded in this emotional
outpouring is a powerful assertion of agency.

In poems such as “They tell me to stop singing and dancing, but I cannot; He lives in my heart,”
Mirabai pits her inner spiritual truth against the external demands of society. Her body, voice, and
emotions are claimed not by her in-laws or social expectations, but by her beloved deity. This
insistence on interiority as the source of authority was itself deeply subversive, particularly for a
high-caste woman.

Moreover, her use of domestic metaphors to critique her social world is subtle yet pointed. The
neglectful husband, the jealous mother-in-law, and the controlling brother-in-law become stand-ins
for oppressive structures that sought to domesticate and silence her. Her choice to sing in public, to
renounce royal luxuries, and to identify herself as Krishna’s lover—not as a widow or queen—
constitute acts of poetic defiance.

5. Interpretive Tendencies: Saints, Rebels, and Ideological Appropriations

The interpretation of Mirabai has been deeply shaped by the ideological lenses of modern scholars
and translators. For instance, Parita Mukta in Upholding the Common Life (1994) presents Mirabai as
a figure of social emancipation, especially for Dalit and female communities. She emphasizes oral
traditions where Mirabai’s husband, not his younger brother, is portrayed as the villain who seeks to
poison her—a clear challenge to sanitized, Brahmanical retellings. Mukta’s Mirabai is not an ideal
wife but a woman who rejects forced intimacy and oppressive gender norms, finding liberation in
divine love and the company of bhaktas.

Kumkum Sangari, in contrast, provides a more critical feminist reading. While acknowledging
Mirabai’s resistance, Sangari suggests that her choice of ascetic widowhood falls within the
patriarchal repertoire of acceptable female alternatives. In refusing marriage and embracing celibacy,
Mirabai may have internalized societal expectations rather than entirely rejecting them. Yet Sangari
also concedes that Mirabai reconfigures these roles on her own terms—remaining within the social
order while quietly undermining it.

Male scholars have tended to emphasize Mirabai’s piety over her rebellion. Paraśurām Caturvedī,
whose Mīrā padāvalī remains a standard edition, portrays her as a devoted child-wife who turns to
Krishna only after her husband’s death. He presents her as a model widow whose bhakti does not
conflict with her conjugal duties—thereby reinforcing patriarchal norms.

Arvind Siṃh Tejāvat, a more recent commentator, rejects the idea that Mirabai’s marriage was
unhappy or unconsummated. He argues instead that she declared her spiritual marriage to Krishna
only after her husband’s death, primarily to avoid sati. Ironically, even while attempting to reclaim
Mirabai as a political rebel, Tejāvat refuses her the right to sexual autonomy within marriage,
exposing the limits of patriarchal reformism.

6. Gender, Sexuality, and the Politics of Devotion

One of the most contentious aspects of Mirabai’s story is her marital relationship. Was her marriage
consummated? Did she refuse conjugal duties? Did she perform sati? Different authors offer
contradictory answers, revealing how questions of sexuality and gender lie at the heart of Mirabai’s
legacy.
In feminist renderings, her refusal to sleep with her husband—whether literal or symbolic—becomes
a cornerstone of her resistance. To assert that she was Krishna’s bride and to refuse physical intimacy
with a mortal husband was to claim a spiritual subjectivity that transcended female objectification. In
a society where women’s virtue was measured by their sexual obedience, Mirabai’s devotion was not
merely religious; it was political.

Yet even this rebellion was couched in terms of love, not confrontation. She does not denounce
patriarchy explicitly; she simply walks away from it. This mode of dissent—quiet, poetic, spiritual—
has been criticized as insufficiently radical. But it is precisely this ambiguity that makes Mirabai such
a powerful figure: she is neither wholly submissive nor overtly militant, but rather someone who
chooses her own path within constrained circumstances.

Her use of Krishna—a divine male—as her object of devotion also invites debate. Is this merely
another form of patriarchy, or does it represent an alternative cosmology where intimacy with the
divine reconfigures power? For many women across centuries, Mirabai’s Krishna has symbolized not
dominance but tenderness, not hierarchy but emotional reciprocity.

7. Conclusion: The Power of Ambiguity

The figure of Mirabai resists easy categorization. She is at once a saint and a rebel, a Rajput and a
renouncer, a celibate widow and a passionate lover. These contradictions are not failures of
representation but the very source of her cultural power. Her poetry allows women to articulate
longing and discontent in spiritual terms; her story legitimizes resistance within the language of
devotion.

Mirabai’s legacy, transmitted through bhajans, hagiographies, feminist writings, and popular media,
reveals the evolving tensions between religiosity and rebellion, submission and autonomy. In the
1945 Tamil film “Meera,” she is portrayed as an ideal bhakta; in the feminist readings of the late 20th
century, she becomes a symbol of resistance. Each retelling constructs its own Mirabai, shaped as
much by the concerns of the interpreter as by the texts themselves.

What remains constant is her refusal to conform—whether to royal protocol, widowhood rituals, or
narrative expectations. In a world that often reduces women to roles, Mirabai sings her own truth.
That truth, whether devotional or defiant, continues to echo through time.