Sant Tukaram Temples, Dehu

Dehu, a small town on the Indrayani river close to Alandi, is revered in the Varkari tradition as the home of Sant Tukaram, the 17th-century saint-poet whose abhangs (devotional verses) remain central to Marathi bhakti literature and to Varkari worship of Vitthal. The town preserves his memory across several linked sites: the Janm Sthan Temple marks his birthplace, while the Vaikunthstan Temple, with its own riverside ghat on the Indrayani, stands at the spot devotees believe he ascended bodily to Vishnu’s abode of Vaikuntha rather than dying in an ordinary sense — a belief this entry presents as devotional tradition rather than documented history. A more recent addition, the Gatha Mandir, houses a large statue of the saint and has some 4,000 of his abhangs carved directly into its walls, making the complex as much a living repository of his poetry as a shrine. The original temple associated with Tukaram was built by his own younger son, Narayanbaba, in 1723, and still contains a stone (pashan) traditionally identified as the spot where the saint once undertook a fast.

Like Alandi just a few kilometres away, Dehu’s significance reaches well beyond the town itself through its role in the Pandharpur Wari: each year in the month of Ashadh, a palanquin procession carrying relics associated with Tukaram departs Dehu on the same long walking pilgrimage to Pandharpur that Dnyaneshwar’s palkhi from Alandi also makes, the two processions together forming the backbone of Maharashtra’s Varkari pilgrimage calendar.