- Lived:
- c. 1450–1520 by the placement this book follows (proposals range from 1267 to 1528) · born Sīr Govardhanpur, on the edge of Varanasi; died, by rival traditions, in Banaras or at Chittor
- Field:
- Bhakti saint-poet of the north Indian sant tradition — and, by his own insistence, a working Chamar leather-worker of Varanasi
- The Big Idea:
- He answered caste twice: by signing his despised trade into his poems as a title of honour, and by imagining Begampura — "the city without sorrow" — where no one is taxed, no one is second-class, and anyone can walk anywhere: the earliest Indian poem to picture a world after caste as a real, inhabitable place.
- In their words:
- "Says Ravidās, a leather-worker set free: whoever is my fellow-citizen is my friend." (the Begampura hymn's closing line, our translation)
- If you remember one thing:
- A man whose touch was considered pollution wrote forty-one hymns that sit inside the scripture of a world religion, taught a princess by tradition, and drew the first blueprint of a casteless India — and five hundred years later a state of thirty million paused its election so his pilgrims could reach the lane where he cut leather.