Bhagat Ravidas Ji

Bhagat Ravidas, also called Raidas, was a saint-poet from the Varanasi region whose hymns Guru Arjan Dev Ji placed in the Adi Granth in 1604, so that his bani is part of Sri Guru Granth Sahib today. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says he was born near Varanasi to Raghu and Ghurbinia, belonged to the Chamar community and followed the family trade of tanning hides and making shoes. It describes him as a Vaishnava saint in the tradition of Ramanand and says little firm biography survives. Sources give his dates anywhere from the late 14th to the early 16th century (SikhNet gives 1376 to 1540), so no birth year is given here.

His teaching: The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says he affirmed the oneness, omnipresence and power of God, rejected distinctions of caste and creed, taught that God is realised by dwelling on the Name rather than through forms and ritual, and held pilgrimage and bathing at the sixty-eight holy places, and the worship of images, to be vain. It says he gathered thousands of followers, among them people of higher castes and the Rajput princess Mirabai, and that he travelled as far as Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Gwalior and Multan.

In Sri Guru Granth Sahib

• Guru Arjan Dev Ji collected the hymns of the Gurus and of fifteen Bhaktas and Sufis, among them Shaikh Farid, Kabir and Ravidas, and the volume was installed in the Harimandar in 1604 (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism).
• The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism counts forty of his hymns, in sixteen ragas; SikhNet counts 41 compositions.
• His hymn Begumpura is at Ang 345 in Raag Gauri. In the BaniDB English rendering the opening line is "Baygumpura, the city without sorrow, is the name of the town." Wikipedia summarises the word as a place without sorrow or fear where all are equal.

Remembered for: The Khalsa Panth reveres him as a Bhagat whose words the Gurus themselves chose to keep. Many of his followers, the Ravidassias, revere him as their Guru. After the killing of the deputy head of Dera Sachkhand Ballan, Sant Ramanand Dass, at a Ravidassia temple in Vienna in May 2009, the Dera announced a separate Ravidassia religion on 29 January 2010, with its own scripture, the Amritbani Guru Ravidass Ji, in place of the Guru Granth Sahib in its temples (Wikipedia, citing news reports). Thousands of followers travel to Varanasi for his birth anniversary. In February 2025 about 3,000 followers boarded the Begumpura Express from Jalandhar, led by the Dera's head, Niranjan Das (The Tribune).