Important Facts For Prelims
Guru Ravidas Jayanti
- 10 Feb 2020
- 2 min read
Why in News
Guru Ravidas Jayanti was celebrated on 9th February, 2020.
- Ravidas Jayanti is celebrated on Magh Purnima, the full moon day in the month of Magh according to the Hindu lunar calendar.
- Guru Ravidas was a 14th century saint and reformer of the Bhakti movement in North India.
- It is believed that he was born in Varanasi in a cobbler’s family.
- He gained prominence due to his belief in one God and his unbiased religious poems.
- He dedicated his whole life to the abolition of the caste system and openly despised the notion of a Brahminical society.
- His devotional songs made an instant impact on the Bhakti Movement and around 41 of his poems were included in ‘Guru Granth Sahib’, the religious text of the Sikhs.
Bhakti Movement
- The development of the Bhakti movement took place in Tamil Nadu between the seventh and ninth centuries.
- It was reflected in the emotional poems of the Nayanars (devotees of Shiva) and Alvars (devotees of Vishnu). These saints looked upon religion not as a cold formal worship but as a loving bond based upon love between the worshipped and worshipper.
- In course of time, the ideas of the South moved up to the North but it was a very slow process.
- A more effective method for spreading the Bhakti ideology was the use of local languages. The Bhakti saints composed their verses in local languages.
- They also translated Sanskrit works to make them understandable to a wider audience. Examples include Jnanadeva writing in Marathi, Kabir, Surdas and Tulsidas in Hindi, Shankaradeva popularising Assamese, Chaitanya and Chandidas spreading their message in Bengali, Mirabai in Hindi and Rajasthani.
