Issued on 10/02/1971
Issued on 24/06/2001
Guru Ravidas was one of the brightest luminaries of the Bhakti Movement of the fifteenth century, a religious renaissance in India. As stories of Guru Ravidas’s selfless devotion and philosophy of universal love spread far and wide, he had to face the challenge of the orthodox society. Ravidas was born as an untouchable. However, his true devotion towards God was a great source of strength and he proved that irrespective of caste and creed, all are equal in the eyes of God and only sinful actions bring a bad name and dishonor to a man. Influenced by Guru Ravidas’ teachings, the Maharaja and the Rani of Chittor became disciples of Guru Ravidas. The famous saint poetess, Mirabai, also became a disciple of Guru Ravidas.
Best wishes to everyone on Birth Anniversary of Guru Ravidas.
Read also – I, Ravidas, proclaim all vedas are worthless.
This is perhaps the first road outside India named after Shri Guru Ravidass Ji. This road is leading to Shri Guru Ravidass Bhavan (worshiping place) in Bedford, UK. The dispute between the Guru Ravidass Community Center and the local council was resolved last week. Congratulations to the community leaders who successfully campaigned for the ownership of the road.
Check also – I, Ravidas, proclaim all Vedas are worthless
Guru Ravi Dass Lane, Bedford, UK
Guru Ravi Dass Lane, Bedford, UK
Guru Ravidas Lane, Bedford, UK (Google Maps)
Photos credit and the news from
Filed under Dalit-Bahujans, Dr B R Ambedkar, Good News, Guru Ravidas
Today’s Dalit History post focuses on Guru Ravidass. He represents one of many Dalit saints within our liberatory spiritual traditions who challenge Hinduism and its painful notions of pollution. These thinkers fearlessly explored the existential questions posed by caste apartheid with their counter vision of justice, freedom, and one’s true place in the universe.
Guru Ravidas
Guru Ravidass was one such towering figure. A Chamar saint, poet, and philosopher, he called himself a ‘tanner now set free’. He was the first to envision an Indian utopia in his song “Begumpura”—a modern casteless, classless, tax-free city without sorrow. This vision was in stark contrast to the dystopia of the Brahmanical Kali Yuga.
Check also – I, Ravidas, proclaim all Vedas are worthless.
Emerging from the Bhakti tradition he employed loving devotion as a method of social protest against Untouchability. The path he chose was free from religious rituals and sectarian formalities. It emphasized the dignity of labour and compassion for all. It reflected the democratic and egalitarian traits of his social philosophy. He dared challenging the tyranny of the Brahmin spiritual hegemony by wearing dhoti (cloth wrapped around the waist), the janeue (sacred thread), and tilak (sacred red mark on forehead).
His poetry became one of the main vehicles of his social protest. Written in the vernacular of the common man, he hoped to “provide for a better world and a fight against exploiters, power-holders and oppression going on under the name of religion”.
Check also – Photos and what Guru Ravidas Ji said
His spiritual teachings became a catalyst that helped concretize the Dalit cultural space in Punjab as his followers have grown beyond India to the world. The followers of his path, represent a range with some devotees counting themselves as Ravidassi Sikhs, while the vast majority now consider themselves a separate religion from Hinduism and Sikhism. One of the key defining characteristics of Ravidassias is that they must believe that Ravidass is a guru (saint) whereas the Sikhs consider him a merely bhagat (holy person). Ravidassias also have compiled their own holy book of Ravidass’ teachings, the Amritbani Guru Ravidass Ji, and many Ravidassia temples now use this book in place of the Guru Granth Sahib.
Check also – Stop Attacking Dalit Statues and Dalit Pride
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Chaudan saai tetees ki magh sudi pandras,
Dukhion ke kalyan hit pargte Guru Ravidas
Guru Ravidas Ji
As per this couplet Guru Ravidas was born on 15th of Magh Saudi, full-moon day of 1433 at Seer Govardhanpur at Kashi (Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh). His father’s name was Santokh Das and mother’s Kalsa Devi. Guru Ravidas married to Mata Loona, a very humble woman who supported him throughout his life.
During the times of Guru, the large section of society was tottering heavily under brutal enforcement of caste system and untouchability practices, the then Untouchables bearing the most. Socially ostracized and put under strict caste-based restrictions they were living a life worse than animals.
In such environment, Guru Ravidas, a cobbler and an untouchable himself, emerged as a formidable challenge to Brahminical hegemony and spoke for the rights of downtrodden. He openly denounced all he brahminical scriptures like Vedas, Puranas, Smritis, Upanishads etc as these promoted the hegemony of Brahmins and justified the social inequality and exploitation of masses. As he says –
Charon ved kiya khandoti, Jan Ravidas kare dandoti
(I, Ravidas, proclaim all Vedas are worthless)
Check also – Photos and what Guru Ravidas Ji said
His was the direct attack on the spiritual hegemony of Brahmins that sprang from their claims of Vedas and other brahminical scriptures being infallible and repositories of Truth and Knowledge. While exposing the fallacies of the brahminical propaganda, Guru Ravidas made enormous efforts to provide a simple socio-religious alternative to the labouring masses that would seek equality for all human beings and require no religious rituals.
Guru Ravidas is one of the country’s foremost socio-religious revolutionary who not only attacked the socio-religious inequalities but also preached for liberty, equality and fraternity for all. He was a great poet whose couplets still reverberate among the toiling masses of this country.
He is also known as the one who invented Gurumukhi language against Sanskrit that was monopolized by Brahmins and declared as taboo even for other caste-Hindus. The impact of Guru Ravidas on the Indian society can be well understood by the fact that the entire Sikh Bani (Sikh teachings) are written in Gurumukhi.
We all are well aware of how Babasaheb Ambedkar exhorted us to “Educate” likewise, many centuries before, Guru Ravidas was saying –
Avidya ahit keen, taatay vivek deep bhava maleen
(Ignorance, no education has done much damage; it has eclipsed our rationale)
Check also – Stop Attacking Dalit Statues and Dalit Pride
Guru’s Guru:
If you want to destroy a society, destroy its history and the society will get destroyed automatically. – Dr. B.R. Ambedkar
Hindu fundamentalists have always taken a keen interest in destroying Dalit-Bahujans history so as to make them disable mentally. Historians as usual here also played with the truth and misled the people for centuries. As Buddha is projected as 10th avatar of Vishnu, same way Brahminical forces tried their best to project Guru Ravidas as one of their 33 crores fake gods. Many scholars tried to show Swami Ramanand as Guru Ravidas’s Guru. We all need to think logically, how could it have been possible for Swami Ramanand to accept Guru Ravidas as one of his student? Shudra rishi Shambuk was murdered by king Rama just on doing meditation/worshiping god. Daronacharya had forced Eklavaya to cut thumb of his right hand as ‘Guru Dakshina’. Time when Casteism, discrimination was on peak, when Dalits were murdered, their ears were cut down if they ever tried to hear praise of god, or they tried to worship, when the touch or even a shadow could impure so called upper caste people, how could it have been possible for Swami Ramanand (who was follower of king Rama’s ideas) to accept Guru Ravidas?
Some others tried to show Guru Ravidas as a Brahmin or Brahmin in his previous life, because they were not able to digest the humiliation of being thrashed by Guru Ravidas’s open challenge to caste system. They could have tolerated this shame if any Brahmin would have been talking against the caste system or challenging their supremacy as they had tolerated Char-wak. Many so called scholars have given false claims that Guru Ravidas was Brahmin in previous life and he ate meat so couldn’t reach the god (attain truth) and he was born in lower caste in next life.
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