BJP plans nationwide campaign to mark Guru Ravidas’ birth anniversary

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday (July 27, 2026) said it would launch a nationwide ‘Samrasta Sankalp Abhiyan’ (campaign for social harmony and resolve) from July 29, 2026, to February 20, 2027, to mark the 650th birth anniversary of the mystic poet-saint Guru Ravidas.

Also read: Guru Ravidas, the reformer

At a press conference held by BJP national general secretaries Tarun Chugh and Dushyant Kumar Gautam, the party said 131 sacred urns would be sent across the country from Varanasi, the birthplace of Ravidas.

Initiatives for social harmony would be organised at 21,000 locations; a festival of lights would be organised at 51,000 temples; an outreach campaign would be carried out with saints, students, temples, hostels, and religious groups; and processions, including a month-long yatra from Jalandhar to Varanasi, would be taken out in different parts of the country, they said.

The Narendra Modi government had undertaken several initiatives to preserve the saint’s legacy, including the development of airports, special trains, his birthplace, pilgrim routes, and the restoration of several sites linked to Ravidas, the BJP leaders said.

The birth anniversary campaign’s objective was to take the message of social harmony, equality, and public awakening as preached by Ravidas, Mr. Chugh said. Ravidas lived in an age when Sikandar Lodi, the Tughlaqs, and Timur were “engaged in carrying out religious conversions and demolishing temples across the country”, Mr. Gautam said.

“At that time, their only slogan was ‘the sword or the Quran’. During that mediaeval period, people had no means of expressing their views, and there was an atmosphere of widespread distress everywhere. At such a time, many great saints of the Bhakti movement, including Goswami Tulsidas, Kabir Das, Sant Tukaram, Guru Nanak, and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, carried the knowledge and values preserved in Sanskrit to the masses through their respective regional languages, thereby creating public awareness and providing new direction to society throughout the country,” Mr. Gautam added.

“During that period, the contribution of Sant Guru Ravidas was extremely significant. It was for this reason that Kabir conferred upon him the title of ‘Sant Shiromani Guru Ravidas Ji’,” the BJP leader said.

Sant Ravidas’s vision for an egalitarian society about 650 years ago was far ahead of its time, Mr. Gautam said. Abraham Lincoln launched a movement against slavery in 1837, and B.R. Ambedkar, while drafting the Constitution, laid down the principles of equality, liberty, and fraternity, he said.

“However, long before them, Sant Guru Ravidas had already conveyed the message of ‘chhote-bade sab base’ (small and big live together). He envisioned a casteless society and ‘Beghampura’, a place where there is neither sorrow nor suffering,” the BJP spokesperson said.