Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences - Institute of Asian and African Studies

This paper will consider the links between *bhakti* and the social imaginaries that sustain modern Indian liberal-democratic political thought. It probes the largely overlooked democratic implications of the practices of *bhakti *and suggest that an analysis of these practices can significantlycontribute toward understanding aspects of the culture of Indian democracy. The paper also considers how the moral vocabulary of *bhakti *has influenced dominant articulations of freedom in modern Indian political thought. Through the aforementioned exercise, the paper will also respond to assessments of liberalism and secularism that consider these doctrines to be tied ineluctably to cultural formations associated with the modern west, and thus unsuited for polities such as India.