4 min readJul 29, 2026 04:25 PM IST First published on: Jul 29, 2026 at 04:22 PM IST“Ravidas is a saint amongst the saints”. Kabir’s line captures the place of Sant Shiromani Guru Ravidas Ji Maharaj in awakening the consciousness of the Bhakti era. To carry that consciousness to every household, BJP President Nitin Nabin has launched a special campaign from Varanasi, running from Guru Purnima on July 29 to Magh Purnima on February 20, the 650th Jayanti of Sant Ravidas.This is not just an occasion for remembrance but also a chance to reaffirm our faith in the long-neglected, unbroken line of Indian social and spiritual thought. To understand Ravidas, one must revisit the Bhakti movement and the consciousness it produced, which expressed itself not in the language of philosophers but in lok bhasha, the language of the people.AdvertisementModernity is often confused with Western influence, but the seeds of Indian modernity lie in the Bhakti movement, especially the teachings of Ravidas.Modernity rests on four pillars. The first is equality and human dignity. To speak of equality in a society divided by jati and varna, and to carry spiritual democracy into social equality, was the movement’s greatest achievement. Ravidas’s famous line, “What separation is there between you and me?”, is not a devotional sentiment. It is a social manifesto. The second is the reality of this world and the primacy of karma. Against every temptation of escapism, Ravidas insisted that this world is real, and that one must work here and make it better. The third is the dignity of labour. In a society that had long regarded physical work with contempt, Ravidas raised it to the level of worship. The fourth is good governance and welfare. Ravidas did not confine himself to individual liberation; in conceiving Begumpura, he left a standard against which any state may be measured.The modernisation and democracy the BJP articulates in modern political vocabulary is a contemporary translation of these teachings, which are also reflected in the concept of Ekatma Manav Darshan. Ravidas wanted a state in which everyone was fed, and the great and the small lived as equals. That is antyodaya, which guides the BJP’s governance philosophy.AdvertisementAlso Read | BJP’s missing diagnosis: Why couldn’t the Sangh Parivar hear the young?How that conception is being translated into policy can be read in his famous poem, ‘Begumpura’. Ravidas names his ideal city “the place without sorrow”. PM-KISAN, Ayushman Bharat, the Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana and the Jal Jeevan Mission all seek a society in which no citizen is one illness, or one failed harvest away from ruin.He then describes the city as having no revenue demand, no property burden, no fear, no wrongdoing, no dread of decline. Six centuries later, that list reads like a governance agenda, and it has been met by GST and direct tax reform, BNS, the SVAMITVA Scheme.you may likeThe governance of this city, he continues, is settled and permanent, and within it there is no second rank and no third, for all are of one standing. That is a constitutional principle stated in the 15th century. Its fulfilment lies in discrimination-free access to government schemes, and in the abrogation of Article 370, which gave the people of Jammu and Kashmir the same rights as every other Indian.Then comes the sharpest political demand in the poem: “Residents walk wherever they please, and nobody is stopped at the palace gate.” This is a call for the abolition of the durbar. Seven Race Course Road is now Lok Kalyan Marg, Rajpath is now Kartavya Path, Raj Bhavans are now Lok Bhavans, and the new central secretariat is Kartavya Bhavan. These are not renamings but a change in the culture of power, as is Direct Benefit Transfer, which removed the modern courtiers who once stood between the citizen and what he was owed.Ravidas closes by naming himself and his caste without apology: Whoever is a citizen of this city is a friend of mine. That is the fraternity on which Ek Bharat, Shreshtha Bharat rests. His Begumpura, Kabir’s Premnagar, Tukaram’s Pandharpur and Ambedkar’s Prabuddha Bharat are names for a single dream, and Viksit Bharat is the contemporary link in that unbroken chain.The writer is national vice-president, BJP Youth Wing