Guru Ravidass

Abstract

This paper argues that Dalit consciousness emerged in Punjab against the backdrop of the teachings of Guru Ravidass, an untouchable Sant‐poet of the North Indian Bhakti mwement, who unleashed a fronttd attack on the caste‐based system of social exclusion and untouchability practiced for ages in India. What made him distinct from his contemporaries was lzis low caste birth and the unique method of Bhakti that he deployed to contest the oppressive structures of social dominations. In the Brahminical social order, Bhakti is considered to be a privilege of the dvijas (upper castes) only. By choosing Bhakti as a path of social protest, Guru Ravidass did not only challenge the BralaminiCDl tradition of caste-based privilege, but also laid the foundlltion of Dalit consciousness from below, perhaps for the first time in India.