Singing Oneness: Bhakti–Sufi Poetry and the Making of an Inclusive Spiritual Space on an Indian Campus

“Singing Oneness” is a faculty–student initiative at O.P. Jindal Global University, India, that mobilizes Bhakti–Sufi poetry and music to cultivate a shared and inclusive spiritual vocabulary and mode of participation among students of diverse religious identities and backgrounds. From the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Hindu and Muslim mystic poets used poetry as a public intervention to challenge socio-religious divisions. Drawing on their continued popularity in contemporary India, the project approaches Bhakti–Sufi poetry and music as a form of alternative spiritual engagement through which a shared language of devotion, love, and oneness is activated, allowing rigid boundaries to soften. Through exhibitions, performances, workshops, online engagement, and a large-scale poetry competition, the project engaged hundreds of students directly. The presentation reflects on how culturally familiar artistic formats—rooted in long-standing inclusive traditions—enable students to move beyond difference not through debate, but through shared aesthetic experience, creating a common spiritual space without requiring any overlap or reconfiguration of formal religious identities.