Accounts of Mirabai’s life consistently portray her marital family in Mewar as reacting with deep disapproval and hostility to her unwavering devotion to Krishna. As a Rajput princess and later a widow, she was expected to embody royal decorum, uphold family honor, and conform to traditional domestic and religious duties, including worship of the family deity. Instead, she dedicated herself exclusively to Krishna, openly expressing her love through song and dance, and this radical prioritizing of divine love over social expectation became a source of intense conflict within the household.

Her in‑laws regarded her public devotional practices as scandalous and damaging to royal prestige. Mirabai’s willingness to sing and dance in temples, and to associate freely with sadhus and ordinary devotees, was seen as incompatible with the seclusion and restraint expected of a woman of her rank. This was not merely a quiet disapproval; it took the form of attempts to restrain her movements, confine her, and subject her to strong social and familial pressure so that she would abandon or at least conceal her bhakti.

Traditional narratives go further, describing active persecution by certain family members, including alleged attempts to poison her when more subtle methods failed. These stories, whether read as literal history or as hagiographical symbolism, underscore how completely her spiritual path was rejected by those who feared for family honor and social standing. Her refusal to yield—choosing Krishna over kinship ties whenever the two clashed—intensified the estrangement, and the opposition she faced became a defining feature of her remembered life.

Within this tension lies a central spiritual motif: Mirabai’s devotion is depicted as so absolute that no worldly authority, not even the power of a royal household, could redirect it. The pain of being misunderstood and persecuted by her own family, as these accounts suggest, becomes the crucible in which her bhakti is tested and revealed. In this way, the family’s reaction is not only a social fact within her story but also a spiritual symbol of the cost of single‑minded love for the divine in a world governed by honor, hierarchy, and convention.