Who was Sahajobai, the 18th-century female mystic who also commissioned pilgrimage centres?

Sahajobai was born in Delhi on July 15, 1725, to Anupibai and Hariprasad. After she walked into the world of spirituality, her family too followed her to the feet of Charandas. Her parents and her four elder brothers, Radhakrishna, Gangavishnu, Daskunwar and Harinarayana, also became disciples of Charandas.

Through Sahajobai, I learnt of a strong bond between Delhi and Alwar. The village of Dehra outside the city of Alwar is the place where her guru, Charandas, was born. This is the land charged with the legendary penance and sadhana of yogi-king Bhartrhari. The King of Ujjain, Bhartrhari, is believed to have lived and reigned in the fifth century. He was devoted to his third wife, Queen Pingala. Upon receiving a youth elixir in the form of a fruit from Yogi Gorakhnath, he gifted it to the Queen, for he wanted her youth to remain eternal. The Queen was in love with a policeman, and she desired his youth above all else, so she gave the fruit to him. The man was attracted to a prostitute, and he gifted the fruit to her. The woman who sold her body found the fruit to be a guarantee for a continued life of sexual slavery, and she went to the King, offering him eternal youth so he could justly rule the kingdom forever. King Bhartrhari found the fruit in his hands and learned the story of its change of hands. He immediately realised the ephemeral nature of attachment and became a disciple of Guru Gorakhnath, the teacher of the Nath Sampradaya, or the order of Nath yogis. In Alwar, in the temple of Bhartrhari, the dhuni, or sacred fire, burns to this day. This land respects tradition.

The Son of Alwar had initiated the Daughter of Delhi. When I planned to visit village Dehra, the birthplace of Mahatma Charandas, I met Kapil Bhargava, who is a retired teacher and editor of Bhargava Patrika, the community magazine of the Bhargava clan. This is the clan to which both Charandas and Sahajobai belonged. In our first conversation,31 he remarked that the land of Alwar was endowed with spiritual energy. I asked him if he knew of any visual document to indicate what Sahajobai actually looked like, and he generously shared an article published in the Bhargava Patrika in 1982. Udayshanker Dubey wrote this article on Sahajobai, sharing one rare picture, possibly a photo of a painting of Sahajobai. In that faded picture, I could make out a young woman’s face that was fair and had steadfast eyes. This article was published the year I was born. Dubey Ji was no more in the world. Forty years later, I was trying to retrace my steps into the late medieval history of Indian bhakti tradition with a few tenuous signposts.

Like Delhi, my visit to Charandas Dham was again linked to kachoris. When I met Kapil Ji at his home in Alwar, he served me the famous kachoris of Alwar. Dehra village lies close to Alwar city, around 15 kilometres away. We reached the Charandas Dham in half an hour. On the way, I remembered to buy kachoris for my family in Delhi.

A few metres from the temple of Charandas stands an old tree. Kapil Ji pointed to it as the spot where the little boy Ranajit first received the visual manifestation of Guru Shukdev.

A remarkable aspect of Sahajobai’s tradition was the presence of women in her time. At the ashram, we found rare photographs of other women saints of this tradition, such as Shri Suraj Kanwar Bai Sa, Shri Hariya Bai Ji Maharaj and Shri Dayabai Ji Maharaj. These are women sants in India’s spiritual history who haven’t been acknowledged. Among these rare photos, there was a painting of Ramsakhi Ji Maharaj, a transgender saint of the Charandasi tradition. Hagiographies of Charandas mention that one day, as he was accompanying other eunuchs in a group in the streets of Delhi, Charandas beckoned him. He asked the boy if he wanted to know God. The boy started living with him, and he came to be known as Ramsakhi Ji Maharaj. Ramsakhi composed poetry too, but it is lost to time.

In this tradition, for many years and in a small way to this day, women have enjoyed a central position as mentors and mahants. Sahajobai was a mahant in her own time, and she was among the few medieval women saints to directly inherit recognition and powers from her mentor. As noted in hagiographies by Goswami Jugtananad and Swami Ramrup and critical works, such as Charandas Sampradaya aur Uska Sahitya (1995) by Shyam Sundar Shukla, Sahajobai and Dayabai commissioned the making of temples and gave grants for dharmshalas and pilgrim centres.

In Bithoor city, a temple of Radha Madhav stands near the bus stop, and a Shiva temple stands on the Brahmavarta ghat on the Ganga. In Delhi, there were many temples commissioned by Sahajobai, but I found that many lands that had been granted to her in her time have changed in character with urban sprawls and congested colonies replacing the structures of temples and dhams. Charandas had encouraged large-scale participation of women in bhakti and yoga. He taught them Hatha yoga, encouraged secluded practices in caves and forests and sent them on journeys of dissemination. Next to Saint Charandas’ temple, there was a separate hall dedicated to his mother, Kunjo bai. I bowed to the Saint’s mother, remembering Sahajobai’s loving address to Kunjo in one of her poems, complementing her for birthing the master of light in a world of darkness:

Dear sister, come let us celebrate with songs of rejoice,
The Eternal One has descended in human form of his
choice.
How can I describe this wonder? I have no words for this miracle,
So many instruments join in the music, it’s a melodious miracle.
The day of his descent was the festival of fertility, in
the rainy months green,
Dear Kunjo, you are blessed to have birthed Charandas,
look at your sheen!
You have borne the One Man who dispelled the dark
Showing us the path of devotion, sing of him, O Lark!
Guru Shukdev first bestowed his precious grace,
Sahajobai celebrates and sings of this highest place.

During Sahajobai’s time, there were some prominent disciples of Mahatma Charandas, such as Gosain Jugtanand Ji, Ramrup Ji and Chaunadas Ji. The ashram of Chaunadas Ji is located in Manchal village, around 50 kilometres from Dehra. In Jainabad, Mahant Laldas had told me that among the few remaining mahants of this tradition, there is Geeta Bai Sa, the Mahant of Chaunadas ashram. I left for Manchal to learn about Sahajobai and her spirit as preserved by a woman mahant today.

Excerpted with permission from Daughters of Meerabai: Portraits of Unsung Women Mystics, Namrata Chaturvedi, Rupa Publications.