Place · Ravidas birthplace gurdwara · India
Shrī Guru Ravidās Janam Asthān
The gurdwara at Sir Govardhanpur in Varanasi, built in 1965 on the ground identified as the birthplace of Guru Ravidas (c.1377-1527) — the Chamar leather-worker sant whose forty-one hymns in the Guru Granth Sahib expound the vision of Begampura, the sorrowless city without caste, taxation or anxiety. Begampura's description is one of the earliest utopian texts in modern Indian languages. The shrine draws millions of Dalit pilgrims each Magh Purnima for Ravidas Jayanti. The adjacent Shri Guru Ravidas Park and the Ravidas Smarak Dwar were built in 1994 by the Punjab-based Ad-Dharm community. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar visited in 1929.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Tradition
- Bhagat bani in the Guru Granth Sahib
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 25.282, 82.997
Connections (3)
- Scripture as guruHarmandir Sāhib (Golden Temple)
Forty-one of Ravidās's compositions are in the Guru Granth Sāhib, alongside Kabīr's five hundred and Nāmdev's sixty-one. A Banāras cobbler, a Muslim-raised weaver and a Marathi calico-printer are read as scripture every day at Amritsar, which is the most consequential thing the Sant tradition did. Ravidās's Begampura is a city without second or third class, without tax and without property — the earliest description in an Indian language of a society organised without caste.
- Site adjacencyKabīr Chaurā, Varanasi
Kabīr Chaurā and the Ravidās shrine stand less than a kilometre apart in Banāras — a weaver's quarter and a cobbler's, two artisan castes that produced the two Sant poets most quoted against caste. The city that sells liberation contains the two sharpest arguments against selling it. Between them the two men contribute some three hundred and thirty-three compositions to the Guru Granth Sāhib, more than any of the Sikh Gurus except Arjan and Nanak.
- Site withinKāshī / Vārānasī / Banāras
Shrī Guru Ravidās Janam Asthān lies within Kāshī / Vārānasī / Banāras — the two sites sit about 5 km apart, well inside the city's historical boundary and part of the same urban or peri-urban landscape. Shrī Guru Ravidās Janam Asthān is one of the specific sites that give Kāshī / Vārānasī / Banāras its layered character, and reads differently when seen as a stop within the larger city rather than as an isolated monument on an open map. The surrounding neighbourhoods, roads and other heritage ensembles belong to the same single urban fabric.
On these journeys
- Places of the Granth's bhagats
- Texts that travel — translation and adaptation
- Sant, Bhakti & Sufi Networks
Sources
Ravidas; Guru Granth Sahib bhagat bani
Open Shrī Guru Ravidās Janam Asthān in the repository →