Mirabai was a sixteenth century poet, singer, saint, and perhaps the most famous and quoted of the women bhakta poets of north India. Versions of her songs can be found all over India, and she is the subject of films, books, dances, plays and paintings.

Mirabai was born in 1498, the only daughter of a Rajput chieftain and landlord by the name of Ratan Singh. Her mother died when Mirabai was only four or five years old. From an early age, she is said to have been devoted to Krishna, as her verse "O Krishna, did You ever rightly value my childhood love?" seems to testify. Her form of worship was influenced by relatives of her grandfather’s house, who were devotees of a mystical form of Hinduism, the path of Bhakti. The Bhakti tradition approached god through pure love and devotion. Many Bhakti followers became wandering yogis or live together in like-minded communities, among people from a variety of castes. In spite of what many felt as subversive, some of them became highly respected and even revered. Their message usually was spread through deeply personal poems through which they conversed with their chosen God.

She was married to Bhoja Raj, the heir apparent to the throne of the famous warrior Rana Sanga of the House of Sisodiya. Among her aristocratic in-law family, she soon became an issue. She refused to worship her husband's family's goddess (devi), claiming that she already had offered herself to Lord Krishna (whom she calls Giridhara or Girdhar, literally, "lifter of mountains"). The stories about her tell that she refused the family's gifts of silks and jewels and insisted on associating with the community of bhaktas. Her husband died after three years before he could attain the throne, and they had no heir. Mirabai refused to join him on his funeral pyre, a practice at the time expected of high caste Rajput widows. In one of her poems Mirabai wrote, "sati na hosyan girdhar gansyan mhara man moho ghananami", "I will not commit sati. I will sing the songs of Girdhar Krishna."

Mira's devotional practices became increasingly intense. She often sang and danced herself into ecstasies, even in public places like temples. News about her spread all over India and she soon attracted a following of devotees from all social groups and castes.

Her husband's family tried to lock her inside the house. In her songs Mira says that on two occasions they tried to kill her, but she was miraculously saved both times. At some point she left the palace and returned to her birth family, but there also, she was blamed. Around 1527 she set off as a wanderer mendicant, traveling to places of pilgrimage associated with the life of Krishna. Tradition says that she was rejected by traditional gurus because she was a woman. Nevertheless, her popularity grew. Before she even arrived at the site, people gathered singing her songs. She passed her last days in Dwarka on the coast of the Arabian sea, the site believed to be that of Krishna's youth.

Modern scholars accept over 200 poems as hers, but more than 1300 have been attributed to her. She has remained immensely popular throughout India because of the beauty of her poetry, but also because of her uncompromising spirit. Gandhi saw Mira as a symbol of a woman who forsook a life of luxury, choosing her own path, and found liberation in nonviolent resistance.