In the Bhagavad Gita, the most popular Hindu text in Arampur and much of north India , the god incarnate Krishna explains how people come to him by various paths. But he reserves his greatest praise for the practitioner of devotion.

Devotionism has played a crucial role in Indian religions. Devotees cast themselves as the slave, child, or lover of the deity to whom they focus their love. This has often meant stepping out of mainstream religious practices and beliefs with devotees borrowing the vocabulary of loving devotion from across a spectrum of traditions. Devotionism, therefore, has served as a dynamo among traditions, challenging their orthopraxies and orthodoxies while infusing them with new, often mystical, elements.

Hindu sants (saints) and Muslim Sufis have particularly represented this dynamism. In the sixteenth century, the Sufi Miyan Mir of Lahore laid the foundation stone for the Sikh Golden Temple of Amritsar. In the fifteenth century, the Banaras poet Kabir ridiculed

Hindus and Muslims alike for their concern for tradition as he exhorted his audience to love a deity who transcended all form.

In Arampur, a number of Sufi tombs exist which draw diverse devotees. Some family members of two of the venerated local Sufis garner respect for the power they are said to have for healing and

prayer. Meanwhile, residents often quote the Bhagavad Gita as they describe Ultimate Being. Yet others gather every week in front of one of the temples to sing passages from the Ramcharitmanas (“the Lake of Rama ’s Deeds”) – the great Hindi devotional poem by the seventeenth century poet-saint, Tulsi Das.