Engaging Bhakti as/in Translation

An Outline of a Methodological Approach to Analyse Ranade's Views about the “Saints and Prophets of Maharashtra”

Abstract

The analysis in this article suggests that M G Ranade’s reflections in his essay about the ‘Saints and Prophets of Maharashtra’ are significant because they offer a site to unravel shifts from a premodern to a modern conception of moral order on the Indian subcontinent, in the context of the encounter with colonialism.
For its role in allowing such unravelling, and for the way it permits attention to hitherto neglected dimensions of Ranade’s comparison between bhakti and the
Protestant Reformation, this article argues for the value of investigating Ranade’s reflections through the framework of translation. While doing the above, the article also seeks to gesture toward methodological issues involved in the study of ideas and clusters of concepts that bear transtemporal resonance and relevance.