Dehu, Sant Tukaram’s Village

01The Gatha that floated

Tukaram was a grocer of Dehu, ruined by famine, who turned wholly to Vitthal and poured out abhangas in plain Marathi. Learned men objected that a shopkeeper should not set out the meaning of the Vedas in the common tongue, and he was told to sink his notebooks in the Indrayani. He did. Then he sat on a stone by the river, without food, for thirteen days, and on the thirteenth the notebooks rose to the surface, dry. That stone is kept in the Shila Mandir at Dehu. In 1650, on Phalguna Vadya Dvitiya, now kept as Tukaram Beej, he left this world; the Warkaris say he went to Vaikuntha in his body.

02Palkhi of Tukoba

The temple of Vitthal–Rukmini at Dehu was the family shrine Tukaram served. By the Sansthan’s tradition his youngest son Narayan Maharaj began carrying Tukaram’s padukas to Pandharpur, and the palkhi has gone every Ashadh since. Lakhs of Warkaris join it at Dehu and walk with it for some three weeks. In June 2022 a new stone Shila Mandir was opened over the rock on which Tukaram sat. The Gatha Mandir nearby has his abhangas carved on its walls.

The life of this place