Hatha yoga Bhakti movement. It eliminated the need for "either ascetic renunciation or priestly intermediaries, ritual paraphernalia and sectarian initiations". This led to its broad historic popularity in India. Later in the 20th-century, states Mallinson, this disconnect of Hatha yoga from religious aspects and the democratic access of Hatha yoga enabled it to spread worldwide. Between the 17th and 19th-century, however, the various urban Hindu and Muslim elites and ruling classes viewed Yogis with derision. They were persecuted during the rule of Aurangzeb, who ended a long period of religious tolerance that had defined the rule of his predecessors beginning with Akbar,
Bhagavad Gita that "when one sees the entire universe as pervaded by the single Universal Spirit [Krishna], one contemplates, marvels, and falls in love with its amazing glory. [...] Having experienced that Truth oneself, all doubts are dispelled. This is how the flower of devotion evolves into the fruit of knowledge." The "Gita" teaches several spiritual paths – jnana, bhakti and karma – to the divine. However, states Fowler, it "does not raise any of these to a status that excludes the others". The theme that unites these paths in the "Gita" is "inner renunciation" where one is unattached to personal rewards