About Saint Ravidas

• Sant Ravidas, also known as Guru Ravidas or Bhagat Ravidas, was a revered saint, poet, and social reformer in the Bhakti movement.
• Ravidas was born into a family of leather workers, traditionally considered as a lower caste.
• Ravidas emphasized the importance of devotion (bhakti) to God and believed in the equality of all human beings, irrespective of caste or social status.
• His teachings focused on the concept of one formless, attributeless divine reality. He rejected ritualism and external markers of caste and social hierarchy.
• Some 40 of the poems attributed to Ravidas were included in the Adi Granth, the sacred scripture of Sikhism.
• One of his famous disciples was the saint, Mirabai.
• Among Ravidas’s moral and intellectual achievements were the conception of “Begampura”, a city that knows no sorrow; and a society where caste and class have ceased to matter.

Why in news?

• There was a mention on Ravidas conceptualisation of Begampura in news.