I think the Bhakti poets—from Andal and Namdev to Kabir and Meerabai—would not understand either. They did not work this way. Their songs were invitations to love, to oneness, to liberation, to breaking away from categories like ‘me’ and ‘mine’ and ‘you’ and ‘yours’. They offer advice which is often imperious but it comes out of a sense of urgency. They are saintly in their love of God but they are not particularly kind; in many poems, they heap abuse upon the non-believer. They often sound contemporary and modern but they are of their time and any attempt to make them something else would be
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