VAIDEHI OKHAD JANAI : MEERA AUR PASHCHIMI GYANMIMANSA

The book Vaidhi Okhad Jaane examines attempts to understand and evaluate Meera outside of her own cultural ecosystem, based on the cultural standards of Western scholarship. Meeras connection with Western scholarship dates back to the colonial period. Colonel James Tod identified Meera as a mystic saint-devotee and a pure-souled poet, while German scholar Hermann Goetz reconstructed her life from a specifically Western perspective. Some Western scholars, including Francis Taft, reduced her life to legend, while Stratton Hawley, in turn, traced the separation in her poetry to the perceived gender inequality of Indian society. Vinay Kalvert, Stratton Hawley, and others studied and understood Meera with great interest, but they dismissed her poetry as somewhat inauthentic due to the lack of manuscript evidence, the plurality of themes, and the diversity of language. Tods canonization was part of the broader policy of expanding and stabilizing colonial imperialism, while Hermann Goetzs reconstruction of Meeras life is the result of the fragmented perspectives of Western thought on life. Other criteria used to identify and evaluate Meeraauthentic, uniformity, coherence, etc.are also not very appropriate for identifying and evaluating Meeras life and poetry. Western cultural understanding is distinct because it developed within the discipline of the Church, whereas Indian cultural understanding has always developed independently, outside of such discipline. The Bhakti movement is an explosion of the Indian minds sense of freedom, and freedom is always realized in the plural. Therefore, Meeras poetry is also living poetry, dependent on Shruti and Smriti, and its voice is plural. This book refutes these assumptions of Western scholarship regarding Meera. This refutation is important so that the common Indian thinks before giving any place to doubt in his mind regarding the centuries old beliefs regarding Meera.