They sing about his birth and childhood and his playfulness. In the imagination of the people, Krishna grows from the eighth incarnation of Vishnu, to the highest God in his own right. As the people's love for Krishna grows, the authority of the orthodox priests is pushed to one side. Bhakti, the popular fervor for loving God, is a liberation. It does not fight against caste laws, but it does ignore them.
People feel freer to think and feel for themselves.
The Bhagavata Purana, a sacred text composed in Sanskrit, between the 10th and 11th centuries, collects all the legends that record the elevation of Krishna into the highest aspect of the divine. The Bhakti movement, which took root a thousand years ago in southern India, is both strange and familiar to us. Westerners who became dancing Krishna devotees in their saffron robes were quite a common sight in the '70s. Maybe they too felt ripples of the sweetness and joy that Krishna brought, when it first liberated its followers, in another millennium.