A sadhu is a renunciant who has left ordinary life for ascetic practice, and the category is broad, covering a great range of Hindu holy men outside the settled order of society.
The renunciant life
The sadhu has abandoned home, family and possessions for a life of austerity, wandering and devotion or discipline aimed at liberation, living by alms and often marked by distinctive dress, ash, matted hair, or the emblems of the deity he follows, so that the sadhu is a visible sign of renunciation set apart from the householder world. The category spans the initiates of the great organised orders, both the followers of Shiva and of Vishnu, and solitary ascetics unattached to any order, and it includes a wide variety of disciplines, from meditation and scholarship to severe bodily austerities.
Entry and standing
One becomes a sadhu by renouncing the world and, usually, by initiation into an order under a guru, receiving a new name and the marks of the order, so that entry is through a formal leaving of ordinary life. The sadhus are supported by the alms of society, which regards the maintenance of renunciants as meritorious, and they gather in great numbers at the pilgrimage festivals, above all the Kumbh Mela. The corresponding renunciant appears across the Indian traditions, and the sadhu holds a recognised and honoured, if marginal, place in Hindu society as one who has stepped outside its ordinary order to pursue the spiritual goal directly.