Bhagat Ravidas Ji was a leatherworker of Benares, a Chamar, and has 41 hymns in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji. His composition on Begumpura, the city without sorrow where no one is second or third and there is no tax and no fear, is one of the earliest statements of an egalitarian society in any Indian language.
He is the central figure of the Ravidassia community, which is concentrated in the Doaba and among Punjabi emigrants from it. Dera Sachkhand Ballan near Jalandhar is its principal seat.
In May 2009 Sant Ramanand of Dera Ballan was shot dead in a gurdwara in Vienna. Riots followed in Punjab. In 2010 the Ravidassia community declared a separate religion and released its own scripture, the Amritbani Guru Ravidass Ji, made up of his compositions, and a version of it was installed in a Ravidas temple at Jalandhar in 2012.
That separation is one of the most consequential religious developments in Punjab in the last half century and it happened almost entirely without national coverage. It has its origin in caste practice inside village gurdwaras, which is the part nobody wants to discuss.
His birth anniversary at Benares draws very large numbers of Punjabis every year, by special train.
His hymns argue from the trade itself, from hides and from the tanner's work, and use it to make the case rather than to apologise for it. That is unusual anywhere in the devotional literature of the period.
He is named by Guru Arjan Dev Ji among the Bhagats whose compositions were gathered, and his verses sit inside the raga sections alongside the Gurus' rather than in an appendix.
The temple built at Benares with Punjabi money is among the largest religious buildings funded from Punjab anywhere outside it, and almost all of that money came from the Doaba and from Britain.