A Living Tradition of South Asia
Every year, in the weeks before the full moon of Ashadha (June–July), the roads of Maharashtra fill with people walking. They walk from Dehu, from Alandi, from Phaltan, from Jejuri, from Satara, from a hundred towns and villages across the Deccan plateau. They walk for fifteen to twenty days. They walk in organised groups called dindis — processions of twenty, fifty, two hundred, a thousand — carrying palanquins that hold the sandals (padukas) of the saints. They sing as they walk. The song is always the same: the abhanga, the devotional verse of the Warkari tradition, composed across seven centuries by saints who were weavers, potters, tailors, gardeners, and women whom the Brahminical establishment refused to acknowledge as spiritual authorities.
They are walking to Pandharpur.
Pandharpur is a small city on the Bhima River in southern Maharashtra. It holds the temple of Vithoba — also called Vitthal, Vitthala, Pandurang — a form of Vishnu (or Krishna, or an independent deity; the theological question is genuinely unresolved) who stands with his hands on his hips, on a brick, as though waiting. The tradition says he has been waiting for his devotees since the beginning of time. The devotees say they have been walking to him since they were born. When the pilgrims arrive — and at the peak of the Ashadhi Ekadashi gathering, they number between 700,000 and one million — they crowd into the temple, touch their foreheads to the floor, and say one thing: "Vitthala, Vitthala." They have been saying it for the entire walk.
This is the Vari — the annual pilgrimage of the Warkari tradition, one of the largest regular religious gatherings on Earth. It is not organised by any central authority. It has no official budget, no sponsoring organisation, no government mandate. It happens because for seven hundred years it has happened, and because the people who walk it believe that walking to Pandharpur is the simplest, truest expression of devotion available to a human being. You put one foot in front of the other. You sing the name of God. You arrive.
I. Vithoba — The God Who Waits
The deity at the centre of the Warkari tradition is Vithoba (विठोबा — also Vitthal, Vitthala, Pandurang, Pandhariraya), enshrined at the Vitthal-Rukmini Temple in Pandharpur, Maharashtra. The image is distinctive and immediately recognisable: a dark-skinned figure standing upright, hands on hips, on a brick, wearing a conical crown. No weapon. No consort at his side (Rukmini has her own separate shrine). No elaborate iconographic programme. Just a god standing on a brick, hands on hips, as though he arrived somewhere, planted himself, and decided to stay.
The theological identity of Vithoba is one of the most discussed questions in Maharashtrian religious studies. The dominant tradition identifies him as a form of Vishnu — specifically, as Krishna who appeared to the devotee Pundalik at Pandharpur and, finding Pundalik attending to his aged parents rather than rushing to greet the god, stood patiently on the brick Pundalik threw for him to stand on while he finished his duty. This legend — God arriving and being told to wait — contains the entire Warkari theology in a single image: devotion to parents, devotion to duty, and a God so patient, so accessible, so humble that he will stand on a brick and wait for you to finish what you are doing.
Some scholars have argued that Vithoba predates the Vaishnava identification — that he was originally a local or pastoral deity, possibly connected to the Kannada-speaking Deccan, who was subsequently absorbed into the Vaishnava fold. The name "Vithoba" is sometimes derived from Kannada viṭṭu ("dwelt" or "abandoned"). The iconographic simplicity — no chakra, no shankha, no standard Vishnu attributes — supports this reading. But the theological debate does not much exercise the Warkari pilgrims, who call him Vitthala, weep before him, and do not pause to enquire whether he is technically a form of Vishnu or something older.
II. The Saints — Dnyaneshwar, Namdev, Eknath, Tukaram
The Warkari tradition is a saint tradition — a spiritual lineage transmitted not through priests or institutions but through the poetry and example of extraordinary individuals. Four figures tower above the rest, each associated with a century, each representing a distinct voice in the tradition's chorus.
Dnyaneshwar (ज्ञानेश्वर, also Jnaneshwar or Jnanadeva, 1275–1296) is the tradition's foundational intellectual. Born into a family stigmatised by their father's return from sannyasa (monastic renunciation) to married life — an act that violated Brahminical law so severely that the family was ostracised and the children declared illegitimate — Dnyaneshwar composed the Dnyaneshwari (also Jnaneshwari), a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita in Marathi verse, at the age of sixteen. It was a revolutionary act. The Gita existed in Sanskrit, accessible only to the Brahmin elite. Dnyaneshwar broke it open. He wrote it in the language of the people — old Marathi, the tongue of farmers and weavers — and in doing so he created one of the masterpieces of Indian literature and established the principle that spiritual knowledge belongs to everyone.
He also composed the Amritanubhava ("Experience of Immortality"), a philosophical poem of extraordinary density on the nature of Shiva-Shakti unity. He died — or, as the tradition says, entered sanjivan samadhi, a living death, a conscious departure from the body — at the age of twenty-one, at Alandi near Pune, in a tomb he entered voluntarily and which the tradition believes he still occupies, alive in meditation, after seven centuries.
The Alandi dindi — the procession that carries Dnyaneshwar's padukas (sandals) to Pandharpur each year — is the largest and most prestigious of the Vari processions, sometimes numbering 300,000 walkers.
Namdev (नामदेव, 1270–1350) was a tailor from the shimpi (non-Brahmin artisan) caste — and the fact that a tailor stands alongside a Brahmin prodigy as a co-founder of the tradition is itself a theological statement. Namdev composed devotional poetry of piercing simplicity and emotional directness. Where Dnyaneshwar gave the tradition its philosophical architecture, Namdev gave it its devotional voice: the simple, passionate, sometimes anguished address to Vithoba as a friend, a parent, a lover, a companion who is always present and always longed for. His abhangas are among the most widely sung devotional lyrics in Marathi:
I am poor and wretched, Vitthala. I have nothing. But I have your name. That is enough.
Namdev's influence extends beyond Maharashtra: his compositions were included in the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh scripture, making him one of the rare figures venerated in both the Hindu and Sikh traditions.
Eknath (एकनाथ, 1533–1599) was a Brahmin scholar-saint whose distinctive contribution was the application of bhakti egalitarianism to daily life. Where Dnyaneshwar and Namdev established the principles, Eknath lived them. He ate with untouchables — a deliberate, public, repeated act of social defiance in sixteenth-century Maharashtra. He composed the Eknathi Bhagavata, a Marathi rendering of the Bhagavata Purana's eleventh book, and a collection of bharuds — dramatic musical compositions in the voices of prostitutes, drunkards, untouchables, and Muslims, designed to show that God is present in every human being, no matter how degraded by social convention. The bharud is a unique literary form: a Brahmin saint ventriloquising the marginalised, not to mock them but to demonstrate that God speaks through them as clearly as through any pundit.
Tukaram (तुकाराम, 1608–1649) is the tradition's most beloved voice — the grocer-saint from Dehu, a man who failed at commerce, lost his first wife and eldest son to famine, was publicly humiliated by the local Brahmin establishment who forced him to throw his manuscripts into the river, and who, through all of this, never stopped composing abhangas of a beauty and spiritual depth that place him among the great poets of the world.
Tukaram's poetry is simultaneously the most accessible and the most devastating in the tradition. He writes in the voice of a man who has lost everything — and who discovers, in the act of losing, that what remains is God. His abhangas are vernacular to the point of colloquialism — he uses the language of the marketplace, the farm, the kitchen — and they carry an emotional charge that crosses every barrier of language and culture:
I have exhausted all remedies. Nothing is left. Now only Vitthala remains. That is not desperation. That is the beginning.
The tradition says that Tukaram did not die but ascended bodily to Vaikuntha (Vishnu's heaven) on the back of Garuda. The Dehu dindi — carrying Tukaram's padukas — is the second-largest Vari procession.
III. The Abhanga — The Unbroken Song
The literary form of the Warkari tradition is the abhanga (अभंग — "unbroken"), a verse form in Marathi characterised by a specific metrical structure (typically four lines, with the first three rhyming and the fourth carrying the poet's signature or mudra) and by its function as a devotional song meant to be sung collectively.
The abhanga corpus of the Warkari tradition is enormous — tens of thousands of compositions by dozens of saints spanning seven centuries. The earliest are attributed to Dnyaneshwar and Namdev (thirteenth century); the latest are being composed today. The tradition is not closed. New abhangas continue to be written and sung, though the canonical authority of the four great saints remains paramount.
What makes the abhanga distinctive is its dual nature as literature and as liturgy. An abhanga is a poem — it can be read on the page, studied for its imagery, parsed for its theology. But it is also, and primarily, a song — composed to be sung in community, while walking, while cooking, while working, while dying. The Vari pilgrimage is essentially a twenty-day abhanga recital: the pilgrims walk and sing, walk and sing, from dawn to dusk, day after day, for hundreds of kilometres. The singing is not accompaniment to the walking. The singing is the walking. The name of God carried in the voice is the same as the road carried under the feet.
The kirtan — the devotional discourse that combines abhanga recitation with storytelling, commentary, and audience participation — is the Warkari tradition's primary mode of religious instruction. A kirtankar (kirtan performer) will take a single abhanga, unpack its meaning through stories from the saints' lives, connect it to the listener's daily experience, and bring the audience to a collective state of devotional intensity in which the boundary between performer and congregation dissolves. The great kirtankars of Maharashtra — Gadge Maharaj, Bahinabai Chaudhari, contemporary figures like H. B. P. Vitthalrao Karhade — are not entertainers. They are spiritual teachers whose medium is song.
IV. The Vari — Walking to God
The Vari (वारी — from vari, "turn" or "time," implying a regular, recurring visit) is the annual pilgrimage to Pandharpur, undertaken on foot, in organised dindi processions, timed to arrive for the Ashadhi Ekadashi (the eleventh day of the bright half of the month of Ashadha, June–July) and again for the Kartiki Ekadashi (the same date in the month of Kartik, October–November). The Ashadhi Vari is by far the larger of the two.
The pilgrimage originates from multiple starting points across Maharashtra, each associated with a particular saint. The Alandi dindi begins from Dnyaneshwar's samadhi in Alandi. The Dehu dindi begins from Tukaram's birthplace in Dehu. Both converge on Pandharpur, joining hundreds of smaller dindis from across the state. The total gathering at Pandharpur during Ashadhi Ekadashi is estimated at 700,000 to one million people — a crowd that transforms the small city into one of the most densely populated places on Earth for a few days each year.
The organisation of the Vari is remarkable for its lack of central authority. Each dindi is self-organising. Walkers bring their own food, sleeping arrangements, and logistical support, often organised by village or neighbourhood. Wealthier devotees sponsor food distributions along the route. Villagers along the path provide water, shade, and rest areas. The entire infrastructure of the pilgrimage is assembled and dismantled each year through voluntary cooperation — a model of self-organising religious community that requires no priesthood, no bureaucracy, and no budget.
During the walk, the daily rhythm is invariant: wake before dawn, bathe, perform morning prayers, walk while singing abhangas, rest during the hottest hours, walk again in the afternoon, perform evening kirtan, sleep under the open sky or in temporary camps. The padukas of the saint are carried in a decorated palanquin at the centre of the dindi, attended by the mahadev (the dindi's spiritual leader). The palanquin is the physical heart of the procession. The singing is its pulse.
Participation in the Vari is open to all — there is no caste restriction, no gender restriction, no requirement of Brahminical initiation. This is not a modern accommodation. It is the tradition's original principle. Namdev was a tailor. Chokhamela, one of the tradition's most revered saints, was an untouchable. Janabai, a maidservant, composed abhangas of searing power. The Warkari tradition's egalitarianism is not theoretical. It is embodied in the act of walking: everyone walks the same road, at the same pace, carrying the same god.
V. The Warkari Theology — God as the Accessible One
Warkari theology is bhakti theology in its purest Maharashtrian expression. Its core commitments are:
Saguna bhakti with nirguna depths: The Warkaris worship Vithoba — a god with form, with a temple, with an image. This is saguna bhakti, devotion to a personal god. But the greatest Warkari poets — especially Dnyaneshwar and Tukaram — frequently dissolve the personal god into the impersonal absolute, and the tradition comfortably holds both registers. Vithoba stands on his brick. Brahman pervades everything. These are not competing claims. They are two perspectives on the same truth.
The primacy of the Name: The repetition of God's name — Vitthala, Vitthala, Vitthala — is the tradition's central practice, more important than ritual, pilgrimage, or even ethical conduct (though ethical conduct is expected). The Name is self-sufficient. It requires no priest to pronounce it, no temple to contain it, no Sanskrit to dignify it. Anyone can say it. The tradition holds that the Name is identical with the Named — that the sound "Vitthala," spoken with devotion, is Vitthala, present in the vibration of the syllables. This is not a metaphor. It is the theological foundation of the Vari: the singing is not about God. The singing is God.
Anti-ritualism: The Warkari saints are devastating critics of empty ritual, caste-based spiritual authority, and the entire apparatus of Brahminical gatekeeping. Tukaram's abhangas return to this theme again and again: the pundit who knows the scriptures but not God, the Brahmin who is proud of his birth but empty of devotion, the pilgrim who goes to Kashi but leaves his heart behind. The Warkari tradition does not reject ritual — it has its own rituals, its own calendar, its own temple — but it insists that ritual without bhakti is dead form.
Moral conduct: The Warkari is expected to be vegetarian, to abstain from alcohol, to practise truthfulness and non-violence, to treat all beings with respect regardless of caste, and to cultivate simplicity. These are not ascetic requirements — the Warkari tradition is a householder tradition, not a monastic one. The saints were married, had children, held occupations. The path is not renunciation. The path is devotion practised in the midst of ordinary life.
VI. The Warkari Tradition Today
The Warkari tradition is one of the most vital living religious movements in India. The Vari pilgrimage continues unbroken, growing rather than shrinking, drawing participants from across caste and class boundaries. The abhanga tradition is alive in performance — kirtan remains a major cultural form in Maharashtra, and Warkari abhangas are sung at weddings, funerals, festivals, and daily prayers across the state.
The tradition's institutional structure remains remarkably decentralised. There is no Warkari pope, no central governing body, no official hierarchy. The Vitthal temple at Pandharpur is managed by a government-appointed trust (a source of some tension), but the tradition itself — the walking, the singing, the kirtan, the community — is self-organising and self-sustaining. This is both its strength and its vulnerability: without central authority, the tradition cannot be co-opted or corrupted by a single leader, but neither can it respond institutionally to the challenges of modernity.
The relationship between the Warkari tradition's egalitarian theology and the realities of caste in contemporary Maharashtra is complex and sometimes painful. The saints denounced caste. The tradition in principle rejects it. But in practice, dindis often organise along caste lines, upper-caste Warkaris sometimes resist the full implications of their own theology, and the historical exclusion of Dalits from the Pandharpur temple (until the temple-entry movements of the twentieth century, led in part by Dalit Warkaris themselves) is a wound that has not fully healed. The tradition's egalitarian promise is genuine. Its fulfilment is incomplete.
The political dimensions of the Warkari tradition are also significant. In the twentieth century, the tradition became an important cultural resource for both progressive and conservative movements in Maharashtra. Mahatma Phule, B. R. Ambedkar, and other anti-caste reformers drew on the Warkari saints' egalitarian poetry. Hindu nationalist movements have also claimed the tradition, emphasising its Hindu identity while downplaying its radical social critique. The tradition is large enough and ambiguous enough to be claimed by everyone — which means that the question of what the Warkari tradition actually teaches about caste, power, and social organisation remains a live political question in Maharashtra today.
What is not in question is the tradition's spiritual vitality. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people still walk to Pandharpur. They still sing the abhangas of Dnyaneshwar, Namdev, Eknath, and Tukaram. They still arrive, exhausted and exalted, at the temple of the god who stands on a brick with his hands on his hips, waiting. And they still say the same thing they have been saying for seven hundred years: Vitthala. Vitthala. Vitthala.
Colophon
This ethnographic profile of the Warkari tradition was composed for the Living Traditions section of the Good Work Library. It draws on the general body of Warkari scholarship, including the work of G. B. Sardar, S. G. Tulpule, Eleanor Zelliot (From Untouchable to Dalit, 1992), Christian Lee Novetzke (The Quotidian Revolution, 2016), and the ongoing ethnographic documentation of the Vari pilgrimage. Marathi terms are given in Devanagari script.
Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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