Moreover in the last fifty years or so, the feminist movement has brought us to the realization that women are the ‘adi-dalits’, the original dalits, those who own no land, wield no power and have no say in the way their worlds are shaped. In Bahinabai’s time, as now, women had to mount a constant fight to secure their rights and to hold them. They had to exercise eternal vigilance. Soyarabai, Nirmala, Janabai, Kanhopatra, Bhaagu, Vatsara, Bahinabai, all lived in circumstances that we would consider difficult, if not downright pitiable. But the Bhakti tradition with its direct approach to God,
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