A poet-saint whose blunt, often provocative dohas challenged caste, ritual, and religious division alike, claimed today by Hindu and Sufi traditions both.
१५वीं शताब्दी · 15th century CE
Raised in a family of Muslim weavers in Varanasi, Kabir is traditionally held to have been a disciple of the Vaishnava saint Ramananda, blending Hindu bhakti and Sufi thought into a devotional path aimed at the formless divine rather than any single ritual form.
His couplets, collected in the Kabir Bijak among other sources, are still sung and quoted across North India for their sharp criticism of empty ritual and social division; several of his verses were later included directly in the Sikh scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib.