Place · shared Hindu-Muslim shrine · India
Ramdevra
Also known as Ramdevra, Ramdev Pir, Ramshah Pir, Runicha, Ramapir
The samadhi of Ramdev Pir, a fifteenth-century Tanwar Rajput of Pokhran venerated as a saint by Hindus and as Ramshah Pir or Ramapir by Muslims, and worshipped above all by Dalit and Meghwal communities across Rajasthan, Sindh and Gujarat. The shrine has a tomb rather than an image, and both communities attend it.
- Date
- 15th century
- Function
- Burial and funerary
- Confidence
- Mixed / layered — The place is documented; its associated historical or cultural record and its named tradition are distinct layers.
- Location
- 27.020, 71.970
Worth knowing
He is remembered for refusing caste distinction at his own table, and his Kamadiya Panth admitted anyone; the jaggery and the cradle are the usual offerings. The Bhadrapada fair draws well over a million people on foot across the desert, which makes an obscure Rajput saint one of the largest pilgrimages in western India.
Connections (2)
- Site adjacencyPokhran
Ramdevra and the Pokhran range are twelve kilometres apart in the open Thar. One is the tomb of a fifteenth-century Rajput saint venerated by Hindus and Muslims and attended above all by Dalit pilgrims, drawing more than a million people on foot; the other is where India tested nuclear devices in 1974 and 1998. The same emptiness recommended both.
- Shared site withHinglāj Mātā
Ramdev Pir's tomb in the Thar and Hinglaj Mata's cave in the Makran are the two great shared shrines of the western desert, and both are attended by Hindus and Muslims under different names — Ramshah Pir at one, Nani Mandir at the other. The desert's religion has been consistently less exclusive than the plains', and partition cut the pilgrimage routes between them.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Ramdevra”. Dominique-Sila Khan, Conversions and Shifting Identities: Ramdev Pir and the Ismailis in Rajasthan (1997); Rajasthan District Gazetteer, Jaisalmer.
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