On 1st February, it was the Birth Anniversary of Sant Guru Ravidas. Sant Guru Ravidas occupies a unique and enduring place in the social, intellectual, and moral history of South Asia. Born into a community that was subjected to untouchability and systematic social exclusion, Ravidas articulated one of the earliest and most profound critiques of caste hierarchy, inherited inequality, and graded social worth. His thought emerged directly from the lived realities of oppression, yet it transcended personal suffering to offer a broader ethical and social vision.
Ravidas must be understood not only as a saint-poet but as a social thinker who transformed the experience of caste-based humiliation into a powerful moral and political imagination. Through his verses, he articulated a vision of human dignity that directly challenged the ideological foundations of caste. His poetry rejects the idea that birth determines worth, purity, or moral status, instead affirming the spiritual and ethical equality of all human beings.In doing so, Ravidas offered not merely moral support to the oppressed, but also a framework for reimagining society itself, one grounded in justice, equality, and the possibility of a casteless social order.
Ravidas belonged to a community that was regarded as Untouchable within the hierarchical social order. From this position of structural exclusion, Ravidas questioned the very principles that naturalized caste hierarchy and ritual inequality. His poetry consistently emphasizes ethical conduct, shared humanity, and the irrelevance of caste status in determining human worth. Rather than accepting Brahmanical definitions of purity and pollution, Ravidas articulated an alternative moral universe in which human dignity was grounded in conduct, labor, and inner worth, not in birth. Importantly, Ravidas’s thought represents a form of knowledge produced from below, a subaltern ethical critique rooted in the lived experience of stigma, humiliation, and social exclusion.His verses do not detach suffering from its social conditions; rather, they transform experiences of exclusion into a critical perspective on the injustice of the social order. Ravidas’s insistence on equality is therefore not abstract or merely theological, but deeply social and political in its implications, exposing and challenging the everyday reproduction of caste domination.
By affirming the equal worth of all human beings, Ravidas offered a moral framework through which subordinated communities could reclaim dignity, agency, and a sense of collective selfhood.
A crucial yet often underappreciated dimension of Ravidas’s thought is his powerful affirmation of self-respect, moral autonomy, and human dignity. In a social order structured to humiliate and dehumanize communities marked as “untouchable,” Ravidas mounted a profound ethical challenge to the very foundations of caste hierarchy. His poetry does not simply register protest against exclusion; it actively asserts the full moral and spiritual personhood of those relegated to social inferiority. By affirming the inherent worth of the marginalized, Ravidas rejected not only external domination but also the acceptance of caste-based stigma, offering a vision of dignity grounded in ethical and human equality.Ravidas’s thought is inseparable from the historical realities of untouchability, labor, and social humiliation that structured his world. These lived conditions decisively shaped the distinctive character of his vision, which brings together ethical universalism with a grounded and uncompromising critique of caste power. His ideal of a casteless and sorrowless social order, most powerfully articulated in his vision of Begumpura, does not appear as a utopian abstraction, but as a reimagining of a society, forged through the demand for equality, dignity, and self-respect for those whom history had systematically denied all three.
Begumpura represents a distinct subaltern utopia , one that centers dignity, freedom from caste, and the ethical reorganization of social relations, rather than limiting transformation to economic redistribution, cultural unity, or romanticized tradition.
Sant Ravidas envisioned a land based on the idea of Begumpura , a term he himself articulated, meaning a sorrowless city. Begumpura represents a society that is casteless and free from discrimination based on any identity. In this imagined city, no one is taxed, no one owns excessive wealth, and resources are shared in a manner that ensures collective well-being. There is no injustice, no fear, no terror, and no torture. Begumpura thus stands as Ravidas’s vision of a just social order grounded in dignity, equality, and freedom from oppression. Through this vision, Ravidas articulated a foundational critique of social and economic inequality in the fifteenth century itself. His dream of Begumpura represents a powerful early imagination of substantive equality rather than inherited hierarchy.
Begumpura in Ravidas’s Own Words :
The regal realm with the sorrowless name —
they call it Begumpura, a place with no pain,
no taxes or cares, none owns property there,
no wrongdoing, worry, terror, or torture.
Oh my brother, I have come to take it as my own,
my distant home, where everything is right.
That imperial kingdom is rich and secure,
where none are third or second — all are one.
They do this or that, they walk where they wish,
they stroll through fabled palaces unchallenged.
Oh, says Ravidas, a tanner now set free,
those who walk beside me are my friends.
The above poem stands as one of the most powerful premodern articulations of a casteless, fear-free social order. It does not merely imagine spiritual liberation, but envisions social emancipation as well, binding ethical equality to material freedom and everyday dignity. Sant Guru Ravidas’s imagination is grounded in the lived realities of exclusion and humiliation, transforming those experiences into a critique of caste hierarchy.
Begumpura is fundamentally distinct from elite visions of social order. Rather than being imposed from above, it is imagined from below, shaped by the ethical, social, and material concerns of those subjected to caste oppression. In this sense, Begumpura represents not only a spiritual ideal, but also a profound social philosophy, one that anticipates modern egalitarian and anti-caste thought while remaining rooted in the historical experiences of the marginalized.
Begumpura differs from elite visions of social transformation. Models that prioritize centralized planning and redistribution often rely on bureaucratic authority and may leave caste hierarchies structurally intact. Ravidas’s vision, by contrast, confronts caste directly as a foundational form of social domination rather than treating inequality as only an economic problem.It also stands apart from village-based utopian imaginaries that romanticize traditional rural life while overlooking the village’s historical role as a central site of caste oppression and exclusion. Begumpura does not idealize inherited social arrangements; instead, it imagines a decisive break from them. Likewise, projects that seek social unity through religious, cultural, or civilizational identity frequently reproduce caste hierarchies within that very unity. In contrast, Begumpura is grounded in equality and explicitly rejects inherited status as a principle of social organization.
In this sense, Begumpura represents a distinct subaltern utopia , one that centers dignity, freedom from caste, and the ethical reorganization of social relations, rather than limiting transformation to economic redistribution, cultural unity, or romanticized tradition.
Ravidas’s verses are included in the Guru Granth Sahib, where he is honored among other socially marginalized poet-thinkers whose compositions challenged caste-based exclusion and ritual hierarchy. His presence in this scripture reflects the long-standing recognition of his ethical and social authority.In Punjab, Ravidas has remained a central figure, particularly among communities that have historically faced untouchability. His teachings have been preserved through deras, temples, and community traditions. For many, Ravidas represents not only spiritual guidance but also a source of collective dignity, identity, and resistance to caste humiliation. These traditions reflect how Ravidas’s thought has been lived, practiced, and reinterpreted in everyday struggles for respect, equality and equality.
Baba Saheb mentioned Ravidas as part of a lineage of ethical and social resistance to untouchability. In “The Untouchables: Who Were They and Why They Became Untouchables? (1948)” , Baba Saheb dedicated the book to Ravidas, along with Nandanar and Chokhamela, three saints born among the communities subjected to Untouchability who attained wider recognition. This dedication symbolically places Ravidas within a long genealogy of dignity from below figures who challenged caste not from positions of inherited privilege but from lived experience of exclusion.
Sant Ravidas was a profound thinker of social and ethical transformation. His vision of Begumpura offers a powerful critique of caste hierarchy, inherited privilege, and social exclusion, imagining a society grounded in dignity, equality, and freedom. These are not abstract ideals in his thought, but ethical claims arising from the lived experiences of those long denied full recognition as human beings.
Sant Guru Ravidas’s vision is more than reflection on tradition, It is an affirmation of a historical and ongoing aspiration for a society without sorrow — A Begumpura — where dignity is shared by all, hierarchy is dismantled, and no person is marked as inferior by birth. In this sense, Ravidas’s legacy continues to speak to the enduring struggle for a more just, humane, and equal social world.
Akhilesh Kumar is an Ambedkarite activist and a PhD scholar at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, at the Centre for Dalit and Minorities Studies.
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