The Pandharpur Wari

The Varkari walk to Pandharpur is organised around sound and around a standing social argument, and both are older than the procession that now carries them.

Abhangas on the road

Walkers travel in dindis, organised companies each with its flag and discipline, singing the abhangas of Tukaram, Dnyaneshwar, Namdev, Janabai and Chokhamela in call and response for the whole distance, so the road is audible before it is visible. Two palkhis, palanquins carrying the silver sandals of Dnyaneshwar from Alandi and of Tukaram from Dehu, head the columns and gather dozens of smaller processions on the way. A vari is the journey and a varkari is one who makes it, and the vow is to walk every year for life.

Old walk, newer procession

The poet-saints whose songs the walkers sing include women and people from castes barred from the temple they are walking toward, and they wrote in Marathi rather than Sanskrit, which is why the movement is understood by its own adherents as a standing objection to Brahminical order rather than an expression of it. The walking is documented from at least the thirteenth century; the palkhi procession that now makes it recognisable was arranged in its present form only in the 1830s. The devotion is medieval, and the choreography around it is not.

The image at Pandharpur stands with its hands on its hips, on a brick. The story attached to it is that the god came to visit his devotee Pundalik, found him occupied in caring for his parents, and was tossed a brick to stand on until he was free; and that he is standing there still, waiting. A deity kept waiting by an act of ordinary filial duty is an unusual founding image, and the Varkari tradition takes it as the point.

The tradition's literature is in Marathi rather than Sanskrit, and its authors are conspicuously not confined to the priestly caste. Dnyaneshwar, whose commentary on the Bhagavad Gita in Marathi is a foundational text, was from a family under social sanction. Namdev was a tailor. Tukaram was a grocer whose accounts failed. Janabai was a household servant. Chokhamela was a Mahar, from a community treated as untouchable, and Sena a barber. Their abhangas are what the walkers sing on the road, in call and response, for the entire distance, so the poetry of the excluded is the audible substance of the pilgrimage.

That did not translate into access. Chokhamela was not permitted inside the temple, and his samadhi is at the foot of the steps outside the door, where Varkaris stop and bow before entering. The exclusion of Dalits from the sanctum was fought over through the twentieth century, and B R Ambedkar's movement made Pandharpur a specific target of temple entry campaigning. In 2014 the Bombay High Court ordered the removal of the hereditary priestly families from control of the temple, and non Brahmin and women priests have since served in the sanctum.

The Wari is walked in dindis, each with its flag, its songs and its own discipline.