In a famous painting made during the reign of Emperor Shah Jahan (1628-1658), the two most illustrious saints of Banaras are shown together – Kabir working on his loom, and Raidas sitting in contemplation on a carpet in front of a hut. With elections around the corner, the Ravidassia community of Punjab is being wooed once again. Both have ‘malas’ (rosaries) and the upper parts of their bodies are uncovered.
Kabir and Ravidas were peers, according to the several hagiographies.
They identify as neither Sikh nor Hindu and follow the teachings of Saint Ravidas, or Raidas, who was born in Banaras in the medieval period, before the establishment of the Mughal empire.
Evidence and Data
The first three centuries of the second millennium were a period of immense social change as the old Brahminical system had been defeated squarely by the end of the 12th century in the Ganga plains covering present day Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar. From Delhi to Bengal, power had been taken over by Delhi Sultanate, the provinces were run in its name by their officials who were Muslims, as well as Hindus. In north India, this was a period when caste-based discrimination was being challenged by the likes of Kabir and Raidas. Kabir is considered the Guru or the teacher of all non- elite caste Bhakti saints in at least north India. Creation of the Ravidassia community in Punjab The first, known as Dera of Ravidassias in Punjab, was founded at village Ballan in Jalandhar district by Pippal Dass in the 1900s. This was likely the first step towards what would be a century-long journey of Ravidassias formally declaring themselves to be a separate religion. In the turbulent 1920s when identity-based politics was animating the life of Sikhs and several other communities who were asserting their non-Hinduness, a new religion, supported by Pippal Dass, known as Adi Dharma came into being. It arose as a protest against discrimination subjected upon lower-caste Sikhs. It creates layers of hierarchy and discrimination, disallowing equality even among lower castes. Importantly, the Adi Dharma movement was a revolt against casteism which had crept into Sikhism, which itself was founded by Guru Nanak on the premise of equality between all. Social respect was still not accorded to them though. The community prizes its ethical teachings of equality and also material wealth; they are an affluent diaspora in North America, Europe and other parts of the British Commonwealth such as Fiji. Since the late 1970s Dera Sach Khand Ballan and Seer Gobardhunpur in Banaras, the birthplace of Raidas have become the two largest ecclesiastical centres of the sect. Followers converge at Banaras on an annual basis on the occasion of Raidas jayanti, usually marked in the month of February and Guru Purnima.The sect also prides itself on ‘Begumpura’ or a city without sorrow that Raidas had conceived of. Following the attack, the Ravidassias compiled a new holy book, the Amritbani Guru Ravidas ji and started to replace the Guru Granth Sahib with it in Ravidassia temples everywhere including in Banaras.
Akin to Ram Rajya, an utopian form of governance, today, Begumpura exists as a Ravidassian symbol; a train was named after this utopian city in 2000, it connects Varanasi to Jammu Tawi. On 25 May 2009 the sect’s internal politics as well as its tense relationship with the Akal Takht over worshipping Ravidas, and other living gurus, which was considered blasphemous by Sikh fundamentalists, led to the killing of the two top gurus of the Dera Sach Khand Ballan in distant Vienna. Raidas’s journey from being a cobbler’s son, and therefore an untouchable to becoming a saint follows the classic arc of rejection by learned Brahmins, then the performance of miracles, usually in front of a ruler, followed by the humbling of Brahmins who accept him to be a saint. Adi Dharma would become the precursor to the Ravidasia sect whose largely ‘Chamar’ followers in the Doaba region of Punjab had acquired economic wealth due to the high demand for leather goods by the British colonial army and other wings of administration.
Raidas was born in a wealthy ‘Chamar’ merchant’s family in Banaras, according to hagiographical sources. Raidas had famously said that the caste system is like the leaves of a banana plant. The Ravidassia sect today is dominated by the Punjab based branch which comprises of Chamar and other castes with roots in the state. Today, the community is demanding the inclusion of a new category in the Census i.e the Ravidassia religion.
