Re-examining the Categorical Separation of Objects and Humans: Materiality in Gujarati Devotional Songs

How materiality matters and functions in the visible aspects of South Asian religiosity, public discourse, and Indian secularism is an often-discussed topic. However, what do we learn about the logics by which Hindus perceive, are guided by their significant texts to perceive, or desire to perceive matter in relation to their everyday world and God if we turn our attention to the conception of matter in Hindu devotional literature? As we’ll see through examples of devotional imagination in a selection of Gujarati songs, this literature prompts us to challenge the categorical separation of objects and humans in examining the capacity of objects to act and cause effects. We find that objects (materials) pulsate with meanings—even in their non-material existence, as in the form of a thought—because of the complex devotional-discursive contexts within which individuals, objects, and material engagements are embedded. Mapping these contexts is a productive exercise to examine the emphasis in these songs on the interplay of materiality and non-materiality of humans and objects as both become inter-relationally meaningful through thoughts (imagination) structured by theological-practical knowledge.