In South India, the Bhakti movement started in response to these factors. Bhakti poets had no problem with physical representations of God. They rejected all markers of differentiation such as caste.

Ramanujacharya was a saint from South India, but his work had a great influence on the rest of India. Northern India was slower to catch on the Bhakti movement; the first signs emerged only with ...

in India and elsewhere. Instead, he chose Bhakti of nirakar (formless) God while earning livelihood through his hereditary leatherwork as a middle path to protest against the caste-based system of ...