Sant Ravidas birth anniversary 2019: 10 facts about the mystical poet

It is the great saint and mystical poet Ravidas’ birth anniversary today. According to the Hindu calendar, the saint’s birthday is observed on Magh Purnima – full moon day in the month of Magh. He was one of the most popular poets of the Bhakti movement and his teachings can inspire us to lead a simple and happy life. He was not at all attached to worldly desires and led an extremely simple life. A new religious movement formed around him and a temple was built in his hometown Varanasi around the 19th and 20th centuries. His egalitarian teachings made him a figure of veneration and pride among people of all castes.

Here are 10 facts about Sant Ravidas:

Ravidas was a mystic and poet of 15th century medieval India. He was one of the most renowned saints of the North Indian bhakti movement. Ravidas was born in Varanasi. His poems and songs often revolved around the low-social position. While objecting to the notion that caste plays a fundamental role in an individual’s relationship to God, Ravidas contrasted his own lowliness to the exalted place of the divine. God, he said, was finer than he, as silk was to a worm, and more fragrant than he, as sandalwood was to the stinking castor oil plant. In relation to God, all persons, no matter what their castes, are “untouchables,” and “A family that has a true follower of the Lord is neither high caste nor low caste, lordly nor poor.” Such high were Ravidas’s charisma and thoughts that even Brahmans were said to have bowed before him. Some 40 of the poems attributed to Ravidas were included in the Adi Granth, the sacred scripture of Sikhism It is generally accepted that Ravidas met Guru Nanak. 

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