Ravidassia


Ravidassia or the Ravidas Panth is a religion based on the teachings of Guru Ravidas. It was considered a sect within Sikhism until 2009. The new religion was officially announced on 29 January 2010 by the Dera Sachkhand Ballan. Its scripture is the Amritbani Satguru Ravidas Maharaj Ji. However, some Ravidassias continue to maintain mainstream Sikh religious practices, including the reverence of the Guru Granth Sahib as their focal religious text, wearing Sikh articles of faith, and appending Singh or Kaur to their names.
Historically, Ravidassia represented a range of beliefs in the Indian subcontinent, with some devotees of Ravidass counting themselves as Ravidassia, but first formed in the early 20th century in colonial British India. The Ravidassia tradition began to take on more cohesion following 1947, and the establishment of successful Ravidassia tradition in the diaspora. Estimates range between two and five million for the total number of Ravidassias.
Ravidassias Sikhs believe that Ravidas is their Guru whereas the Khalsa Sikhs have traditionally regard him as one of many bhagats, a position considered lower than that of a Guru in Sikhism. Furthermore, Ravidassias Sikhs accept living sants of Ravidass deras as Guru. The Ravidassia religion was significantly emerged as a distinct faith following the 2009 assassination attack on their visiting living Guru Niranjan Dass and his deputy Ramanand Dass in Vienna by Sikh militants. Ramanand Dass died from the attack, Niranjan Dass survived his injuries, while over a dozen attendees at the temple were also injured. This triggered a decisive break of the Ravidassia group from the orthodox Sikh structure.
Prior to their break from Khalsa Sikhism, the Dera Bhallan revered and recited the Guru Granth Sahib of Sikhism in Dera Bhallan. However, following their schism from mainstream Sikhism, the Dera Bhallan compiled their own holy book based exclusively on Ravidas's teachings, the Amritbani Guru Ravidass Ji, and Dera Bhallan Ravidassia temples now use this book in place of the Guru Granth Sahib.

History

Basis

Ravidas was born on 15 January 1377 CE to the Chamar community. His birthplace was a locality known as Seer Govardhan in the city of Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh state, India. The birthplace is now marked by the Shri Guru Ravidass Janam Asthan, and is a major place of pilgrimage for the followers of Guru Ravidas today. Ravidassias Sikhs believe that Ravidas died in Benares at the age of 151.

Precursory movements

There existed a diversity of Ravidasi-affiliated panths and deras that were loosely affiliated with one another, headed by sants who had Chamar-origins, such as the Satnamis that had been established by Bir Bhan, Jagjivan Das, and Ghasidas. These early movements had connections with Kabir Panth.
In 1920–25, the Ad-Dharmi movement arose, which consolidated a separate religious identity centered on Ravidas. Around the same time, the Singh Sabha movement of Sikhism was well-underway, which also was consolidating for a separate, Sikh identity apart from Hinduism. Prominent leaders and thinkers of both movements had been educated in Arya Samajist institutions, thus they both adopted an Arya Samaj-approach to push for their separate identities, combined with a Judeo-Christian understanding of religion due to Christian missionary and British colonial influence. Both the Ravidas-aligned movements and Singh Sabhaists revered the Guru Granth Sahib, the primary scripture of Sikhism. However, the Ravidasis celebrated the scripture primarily due to it containing the most notable and earliest-recorded compositions linked to Ravidas. Thus, Ravidasis placed their prime figure's bani on a higher level of importance than the bani found in the scripture authored by others. The Ad-Dharmis compiled a holy-book known as the Ad Prakash, where-in they elevated the historical Ravidas as their central figure, thereby giving a traditional/spiritual basis to their modern religious movement, with Ravidas being imagined as a main "guru" and his poetry forming the basis of their beliefs. Despite this, the Sikh scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib, continued to be used by them in their sacred spaces. In 1946, the Ad-Dharmis took-on the new name: Ravi Dass Mandal. In 2003, there arose a caste-based conflict in Talhan village of Punjab over the management of a local shrine which involved Ad-Dharmis.
Amongst the Ravidasi-affiliated deras, the Dera Sachkhand Ballan played a prominent missionary role, spreading the religious beliefs, including in the diaspora through the Mission Begumpura. Mission Begumpura aimed to consolidate a central location of pilgrimage and worship for the religious community at Seer Gobardhanpur. The dera's second guru, Sant Sarwan Dass, had sponsored a mission to Varanasi to locate and establish a location to serve as the focal point of the Ravidassia community, to realize Begumpura, with construction of a temple there beginning on 14 June 1965. Dalits had longed been excluded from Hindu temples and Sikh gurdwaras by higher castes, thus being shut-out from sacred spaces. Thus, the decision to build their own, central shrine was a mark of independence and upward-mobility, a place where Begumpura paradise could be realize, where-in all are accepted and none are excluded. In 2000, a special, annual, religious pilgrimage train called the Begumpura Express was inaugurated, which would take pilgrims from Jalandhar Cantonment to Varanasi on the occasion of Ravidas' birthday, which furthered promoted the conceptualization of Varanasi as being the central pilgrimage location of the religious movement, akin to Mecca for Muslims and Amritsar for Sikhs. There were calls for gilding of their central temple in Varanasi, a Golden Temple for them, just like how the Sikhs had their own, with the first phase of adding gold-plates to the shrine beginning in 2008.

Foundation of a separate religious identity and split from mainstream Sikhism

Before the 2009 armed attack on Guru Ravidass Temple in Vienna, the majority of Ravidassias were followers of Sikhism. Mainstream Sikhs had long objected to the Ravidasi practice of maintaining the Guru Granth Sahib beside idols/images of Ravidas, alongside a living-guru, with all three being placed on an equal-height platform. Normative Sikhs felt this was a violation of Sikh maryada by the heterodoxical Ravidassia, since the Guru Granth Sahib was viewed by orthodox Sikhs as the embodiment of their guru, thus were offended when persons bowed to an idol or living-guru in the scripture's presence. Furthermore, the dera was not in-line with the move toward a streamlined Sikh identity embodied by the Khalsa Panth. There were also other deras which had offended mainstream Sikh sensibilities due to alleged blasphemy and misconduct centred on issues and disagreements related to iconography, scripture, and ritual, such as Dera Sacha Sauda and Dera Bhaniarawala. In 2001, Dera Bhaniarawala attempted to compile their own granth, with mainstream Sikhs feeling as it attempted to emulate the Guru Granth Sahib. Furthermore, the dera-leader rode a horse in a similar manner that Guru Gobind Singh is portrayed as, which further fuelled tensions between the two groups. In 2007, the Dera Sacha Sauda leader, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, offended Sikhs by dressing-up in a costume emulating that of Guru Gobind Singh and introducing a baptismal ceremony known as Jām-e-Insān, which copied the Sikh practice of Amrit Sanchar. These controversies led to protests against and deaths between Sikhs and followers of the deras.
On May 24, 2009, six shooters attacked Sant Ramanand and Sant Niranjan Das in the mentioned shrine. All six attackers were asylum seekers living in Austria and have been identified as Satwinder Singh, Jaspal Singh, Tasum Singh, and Sukhwinder Singh. The other two attackers, Hardeep Singh and Charnjit Singh, entered Austria illegally. In this terrorist attack, Sant Ramanand, 57, was shot dead and more than a dozen others wounded, including another preacher. This attack led to violent protests in the state of Punjab in India and peaceful protest in London. Later, the Austrian court sentenced Jaspal Singh, 35, to life in prison for murder, and the other four terrorists received 17 to 18 year prison sentences. The sixth terrorist got six months in prison for attempted coercion. The funeral of Ramanand was held in June 2009 and attended by many prominent politicians from across Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. In the aftermath of the attack, the Chamar/Ravidassia community protested both in India and abroad. While protests abroad were peaceful, in Jalandhar and other parts of Punjab they became violent, with vandalism occurring, involving clashes with police. Four protests were killed, who would later be memorialized as martyrs of the Ravidassia movement. The deaths of the four protesters and of Ramanand was commemorated on 13 June 2009, in an event known as Shradhanjali Samagam by the Dera Sachkhand Ballan.On the occasion of the 633rd birth anniversary of Ravidass in 2010, Dera Sachkahnd Ballan announced a new religion called Ravidassia. Dera also announced that the community would have its own separate religious book called Amritbani Satguru Ravidas Maharaj Ji, a separate symbol 'Har' and a separate motto, 'Jai Gurudev'. The move triggered debate among the religious, social, and political circles of Punjab, and Shiromani Akali Dal and the SGPC tried to convince Dera Ballan Head Sant Niranjan Dass to reverse the decision. Akal Takhat also took an unprecedented step and organised Akand Path in the memory of murdered Sant Ramanand. SGPC president Avtar Singh Makkar visited Dera Ballan to meet Sant Niranjan Dass, but he was not allowed to meet him.

Beliefs

Ravidas taught the following principles:
  • The oneness, omnipresence and omnipotence of God.
  • Man changa to kathoti me Ganga
  • The human soul is a particle of God.
  • The rejection of the notion that God cannot be met by lower castes.
  • To realise God, which is the goal of human life, man should concentrate on God during all rituals of life.
  • The only way of meeting with God is to free the mind from duality.