Sant Tukaram

Tukaram was born at Dehu on the Indrayani river into a family of small traders and farmers whose household deity was Vitthal of Pandharpur. In his youth a great famine took his first wife and son, his parents and his business, and he turned away from the world to sit on the hills of Bhamnath and Bhandara near Dehu, reading the abhangs of Namdev and the Jnaneshwari and singing to Vitthal. He received in a dream the mantra “Rama Krishna Hari” from his guru, Babaji Chaitanya. His abhangs, simple, blunt and full of village life, drew crowds, and a learned man of the area, the account goes, made him sink his notebooks in the Indrayani; after thirteen days of fasting on the bank, the notebooks rose dry. Shivaji Maharaj is said to have sent him gifts, which he returned with a few abhangs. In 1650, on Phalguna Vadya Dvitiya, Varkari tradition says he left the world bodily for Vaikuntha; the day is kept as Tukaram Beej. His Gatha holds over four thousand abhangs. Every year his palkhi sets out from Dehu for the Ashadhi Ekadashi wari to Pandharpur, carried by lakhs of Varkaris who sing his words on the road.