Discovering Tukaram - 'Tuka Mhane' ('Tuka Says')

The Tukaram Project is a part of Innishari's 'The Spiritiual Masters of India' Wall Narratives. 'Tuka Mhane', the series, is also an integral part of the Pune branding initiative of Innishari- 'Pune - City of the Future'.

Saint Tukaram was a prominent saint of the Varkari sect and a spiritual poet in the seventeenth century during the Bhakti movement in India. The whole of the Marathi Literature of those times is a literature of Spiritual Democracy — it speaks of equality, of fraternity and of spiritual liberty. There were Brahmins, tailors, kumbhars or potters, barbers and even the so called low castes (Sudras) that felt the call of the divine muse, and contributed their own little streamlet to the general flood. Such democratization of literature had one inevitable result. Away from the 'caste tags' it became just Marathi Literature for everyone. The Bhakti school poets thus not only made the literature but also made the people, a nation. They nationalized the literature.

Saint Tukaram was born in a small village called Dehu near Pune in Maharashtra. He was a devotee of god Vitthala or Vithoba, a form of Krishna. He extended the wisdom of the Bhagvad Gita into simple verses called 'abhangs' for the common man to understand. In the 4000-plus surviving 'abhangs' of Tukaram handed down to us by an unbroken oral tradition, we get a sense of his mind that is esoteric, cryptic, sensuous, direct, sarcastic, comic, inventive, experimental, intense and assertive at the same time.

Tukaram's abhangs have a universal appeal. They cover the entire spectrum of life and living talking about day-to-day activities, politics and how to balance the spiritual mind with worldly matters. They are relevant in the modern day context just as accurately as they were in the seventeenth century. The objective of this project is to revive and bring into focus, the teachings of Tukaram to a modern and 'faster' generation, through a contemporary visual style and interpretation; to highlight its relevance and importance in the current times.

Innishari celebrates and makes a small effort to bring his wisdom to the modern world.