I do not endorse the 16th century Mira Bai but she is an interesting character I keep trying to understand from various dimensions, a responsibility that comes with borrowing her name. This article dissects her life from a clinical and psychological perspective, something that has never been done before! However, I am not the first one to use the word 'maniac' for Mira Bai, she had been called 'anoothi', 'banwari' and many other synonyms of maniac in her time too. Mira herself, in her poetries, accepts that she is mad in love of her lord. Today, she has acquired respect and status of almost a goddess for many and that makes her madness an ornament to her character. Does that make Mira like behavior acceptable in today's society? How would modern psychoanalysts diagnose someone's obsession for a fictional/mythical character which starts affecting their personal and social lives like it did for Mira Bai?
The central theme of Mira's life is single minded love and devotion for Krishna. There is ample of discussion on the nature of this love, which is sometimes called divine, submissive, deep and devotional and at the other adulterous, carnal and intoxicating. However, in order to genuinely understand Mira's love, we must first ask where did she acquire this idea of love from? Alian De Botton along with many other philosophers argues that the idea of love is socially constructed and shaped by the societies and environments we live in. He quotes Lao Tzu, "Some people would never have fallen in love, if they hadn't heard there was such a thing." The idea of romantic love of a partner we entertain today, which should be wholesome (i.e. physical plus emotional) and monogamous, is mostly western, originating in the late 18th century with the advent of Romanticism. Although all historical facts about Mira's life are disputable, I am trying to understand her love from psychoanalytical perspective by tracing her life's generalized history. What model of love, of the east, was Meera reinventing in the 16th century?
The Rajput community of Rajasthan she belonged to and defied against, do not name their daughters 'Meera' even today. The taboo and contempt associated with her name has caused great inconveniences for administrators, researchers, historians and scholars in their work in Rajasthan. Her works were collected from the lower caste communities of Rajasthan, Bhil singers and not from the lineage of princes and princesses she came from. It is because she betrayed the code of conduct and decency Rajput women were supposed to exercise all the time. In the Rajput community, men and women had stringently prescribed roles to be played with discipline, flouting which, brought disgrace to both the genders. For example, a woman whose husband showed cowardice in the battlefield either ended the relationship by breaking her bangles or committed suicide. We also hear a tale of a woman who beheaded herself while her husband was still on the battlefield, as she by her own logic, concluded that the news of her death would end all his desire to return and thus would encourage him to fight courageously.
Meera was born in the late 15th century when the Rajputs controlled major portion of northern India. The various clans fought with each other and there was little space to any other kind of structural development. This made the division of gender roles even more rigid. While men fought on the field, women supported them by being submissive stereotypical wives respecting the sacrifice of their husbands. The sexuality of women was strictly controlled and it was there where the honor of all men lied. Marital alliances were based on political expediencies and not love. However, in the case of the east, the societies were always inalienably mired with religion and love was always present in religious stories of Gods and Goddesses, though with strict rules of chivalry.
The Bhakti movement, amplified by the lower caste saints in the 16th century, made God an object of love. These castes were ostracized and alienated from rituals of worship by the upper castes until now and thus they made bhakti as fluid, accessible and practicable as it could be imagined. Many male saints and poets started treating the lord as their husband and themselves as agony stricken women yearning to end the separation from their husband.
This fluid influence is visible in Mira's life story too. Her household was extremely religious. She was taught worshipping and singing as a means to please the Gods from an early age. According to her biographies, in her childhood, she once attended a marriage and started demanding her own bridegroom from her mother. Her mother pointed at an idol of Lord Krishna as her husband. This became her childhood obsession and she would treat the idol/doll of Krishna as her friend, lover, and husband thereafter. She took this obsession too far when she would talk to the idol for hours, sing and dance for it, and serve it like a real human.
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, an academic discipline formulated in 19th century, was able to prove the deep impact of our childhood on our adult life and future decisions. Our satisfaction, joy, attraction, and selections are guided by what those emotions mean for us as children. This thus manifests in our selection of careers as well as partners and our attitude towards them. Mira's joy as a child lay in playing with her doll husband. She was also imbued with the sacredness of such a relationship and the reverence she was supposed to offer him. Ravindra Jain, the famous lyricist of Hindu epic songs, in his masterpiece, Ek Radha Ek Meera romanticizes the resilience and mental strength of Mira. In his lyrics, he describes the difference between the love of Mira and Radha (Mira was considered as the incarnation of Radha in Braj) and composes: "Radha ne madhuban me dhoonda, Meera ne man me paya" (Radha pursued Krishna in Madhuban, Meera found him in her own heart) and that "Ek Jeet na mane, Ek haar na mani "(Radha, despite assurances by Krishna, could never accept that she has won Lord's heart while Meera never gave up trying to win him over through her prayers). We now know that this mental and emotional strength of Meera emanated from the practice of loving an idol since childhood, which could not have ever reciprocated the same.
Meera was educated in philosophy, and literature and trained in archery, horse-riding, sword fighting, and several other remarkable skills. During her training, she stayed away from her parents and lived with her grandfather, Rao Duda. This training might have insulated her from the stereotypical rituals of Rajput women. Since she could receive her parent's love and embrace only for a short period, this adaptability could have been the source of her patience and her tolerance for distance and separation in love. Meera was also detached from parental intimacy early in childhood which might have instilled a fear of intimacy in her. This can be concluded from the fact that, according to some narratives, she refused to consummate her marriage with Raja Bhoj and claimed that her body and mind only belonged to Krishna. This never meant that she desexualized herself. In fact, she has been more expressive of her carnal desires in her poetries than any known woman in history. In one of her poetries, she complains that Krishna twists the arms of gopis (female friends of Krishna) but never even touches her fingers. It is for this reason that some communities in Rajasthan also use the word 'meera' to cue the word 'slut'. Despite all this, Mira's fear of intimacy cannot be ruled out. There is less vulnerability, revelation, and opening up and even lesser possibilities of hurt, rejection, and disappointment in loving a perfect pleasant God or idol when compared to loving a husband with human needs and flaws.
Childhood obsession of Krishna being her husband, the fear of intimacy, and the mental strength and resilience she had clinically developed throughout her life, culminated in an enormously powerful conviction about her trajectory ahead. She used her strengths to trump her weaknesses. Bhakti was also escapism from the harsh realities and rituals of life she was not ready for. Gradually, it became a medium for the development and refinement of the creative potential inside her in the form of poetries. She found friendships in fellow poets and bhakts and, to be put straightforwardly, literally enjoyed herself to the fullest in her prayers! A joy not very comprehendible to the modern world. She found mentorship in her spiritual quest by Saint Raidas, which she upheld throughout her life despite him being a lower caste.
Her eccentric and spiritually adorned poetical career also gave her the required tools to deal with her day to day adversities. Rajasthani folklore (that I have been able to gather from some tertiary sources) narrate an incident when a man demanded physical communion with Meera claiming himself to be incarnation of lord Krishna. Meera agreed and laid a bed frame in public for the world to see her divine physical merger with her lord. This embarrassed the man and drove him away. The incident depicts the boldness she had achieved in her character and how she harnessed her creativity and 'lunatic' perception for her own protection. She also had narcissistic self confidence. I second that statement with Madhu Kishwar's observation that the number of poetries starting with 'I' far outnumber the poetries starting with any other word.
Mira's gender coupled with her reputation of intermingling with male saints became an inhibiting factor in the creation of a new cult, something which her male contemporaries were able to do (Kabir, Rahim, Tulsi, Nanak, Chaitnaya, and many more). She did try to uplift and encourage women through her poetry by frequently addressing her friends, 'Sakhis', and confessing her pain to them but they could never bridge the social distance and the wedge of female chastity that always remained between her and other women. Meera, however, succeeded in creating a crazy idea of love, something that the romanticism of the west would fail in, thousand times over. She devoted her entire life for a single idea she had conceived as a child and merged her prayers, poetries, music, dance, stature, all to further it. A lot of information on physical features, personality traits, characteristics, and tidbits we know about Krishna, emerged from the imaginations of Meera. Her poetries coalesce love, art, creativity, and spirituality in one magical union. An interesting thing about my research on her is the absence of any historical account of her death. She is said to have been merged in the idol of lord Krishna in religious writings, the kind of, which fascinate readers with the poison to nectar story. I take this factual absence as a cue to realize that she never died and as long as I live, she never will.
Meera represents to me the courage to be mad, purposely mad. The courage to be oneself, to follow one's own conviction, to shun the need for external validation, to create one's own values, principles and authority to submit to. She represents freedom from censorship, from sectarian boundaries in friendship and love, from the need of approval. She represents creativity and confidence, love and poetry, sacrifice and devotion, ecstasy and salvation. If she is a maniac, she is one of her kind and an adorable one!
The best thing about all this is that although one may be sceptic of the religious figure Krishna, we know Meera existed. An ordinary woman who created an extraordinary idea of love for the world, lived and went through all ordeals that women of her times could suffer from. Meera is a famous poetess in the medieval history of India and Krishna is a God in Indian mythology. We know Meera loved and we want Krishna to exist, sometimes, only to conclude that she did not drink all the metaphorical poison in vain.
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| A Chinese version of Meera found at Ujala's place |
References:
1. Kishwar, M., & Vanita, R. (1992). Poison to Nectar: The life of Mirabai. JSTOR, 19(4), 65–75.
2. Sivananda, S. (2005). Mira Bai. In Lives of saints (pp. 340–346). essay, Divine Life Society.
3. Priyamvada, P. (2022, March 1). Mirabai: A tale of simultaneous devotion and subversion: #indianwomeninhistory. Feminism in India. Retrieved September 29, 2022, from https://feminisminindia.com/2018/03/09/mirabai-devotion-subversion-bhakti/
4. Ward, I., & Zarate, O. (2011). Psychoanalysis: A graphic guide. Icon Books.
5. Life, S. O. (2016). Alian De Botton On Love. YouTube. YouTube. Retrieved September 29, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ6K_f7oSdg&list=PLGOySOjEv5SsKwKjYvU3BeuKS43HeP-YV&index=3
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8. Radio City 91.1 FM. (2015). Meera Bai. Bharat Ki Amar Kahaniyan. episode 10 New Delhi, Delhi.
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