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Members of the Satnami religious sect set fire to the office of the Superintendent of Police and pelted the office of the District Collector with stones in Baloda Bazar in central Chhattisgarh on Monday after alleged inaction over the desecration of a religious site at Amar Cave in the district.
Members of the mostly Scheduled Caste Satnami Samaj or Satnam Panth live mainly in Chhattisgarh and contiguous areas of Madhya Pradesh. The desecrated shrine, known as Jaitkham, is located about 5 km from Giraud village in Baloda Bazar district, at the birthplace of Guru Ghasidas, an 18th century saint to whom the Chhattisgarh Satnamis trace their theological lineage.
Guru Ghasidas was born in 1756; however, the antecedents of the sect lie further back in history. The expression sat naam (literally “true name”) was popularised by the 15th century Bhakti poet Kabir, but was likely coined earlier.
Kabir, who rejected idolatry and the orthodoxy of organised religion, was a torchbearer of the nirguna bhakti tradition — the worship of an immanent, formless Absolute, which he referred to as sat naam or satya naam in several of his poems.
In 1657, a mendicant named Birbhan, who was inspired by the teachings of Kabir, founded a Satnami community in Narnaul in present-day Haryana. The Mughal court historian Khafi Khan (1664-1732) wrote that the Satnamis were “some four or five thousand householders in the pargana of Narnaul and Mewat… their livelihood and profession is usually agriculture and trade in the manner of Banyas [or tradesmen] with small capital” (Irfan Habib: The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707).
“Ritual and superstition were condemned, and allegiance was explicitly rendered to Kabir… Caste distinctions within the community of believers were forbidden… An attitude of sympathy with the poor and hostility towards authority and wealth is apparent [in Satnami preachings],” Habib wrote in his classic 1963 work.
Initially, most Satnamis belonged to an “untouchable” caste engaged in leatherwork. The community has, however, moved away from the profession over time.
“If anyone should want to impose tyranny and oppression upon [the Satnamis]… they will not tolerate it; and most of them bear arms and weapons,” Khafi Khan wrote. In 1672, Satnamis living in present-day Punjab and Haryana rose in revolt against Aurangzeb’s ever-increasing tax demands.
“The revolt…began as a rural affray,” Habib wrote. “One of the Satnamis was working in his fields when he exchanged hot words with a [Mughal] piyada (foot-trooper), who was guarding the corn-heap. The piyada broke the Satnami’s head by a blow from his stick. Thereupon a crowd of that sect mobbed that piyada and beat him so much as to reduce him almost to a corpse.” (Habib: Agrarian System).
When the local Mughal shiqdar (police chief) sent troops to arrest the culprits, open rebellion broke out. The rebels occupied Narnaul and Bairat for some time, but the Mughals eventually crushed the rebellion and killed thousands of Satnamis. Despite lacking weapons and equipment, the Satnamis fought valiantly and “repeated scenes of the great war of Mahabharata”, the Mughal chronicler Saqi Mustad Khan wrote in the Maasir-i-Alamgiri.
Aurangzeb all but wiped out the community, which would see a revival only in the mid-eighteenth century — in present-day Uttar Pradesh under Jagjivandas, and in present-day Chhattisgarh under Ghasidas.
There are several theories as to the sources of Ghasidas’ inspiration and spiritual development — from Sant Ravidas (15th or 16th century) to Kabir. However, “most present-day Satnamis either deny or know nothing of a connection between Ghasidas and the previous Satnami movements” in northern India, religious studies scholar Ramdas Lamb wrote in Rapt in the Name: The Ramnamis, Ramnam, and Untouchable Religion in India (2002).
Nonetheless, the religious philosophy of Guru Ghasidas echoed that of the older Satnamis. His “first and foremost rule was the worship of one true God, through the chanting of his name, ‘Satnam’, and the abolition of any form of image worship,” Lamb wrote. This rejection of deity worship effectively allowed the ‘untouchable’ Satnamis to transcend the restrictions on temple-entry.
Ghasidas also asked his followers to abstain from eating flesh (and flesh-like fruits such as eggplant), and consuming alcohol, smoking, or chewing tobacco. He asked them to use brass utensils instead of clay, stop working with leather and carcasses, and to wear a necklace of beads made from tulsi, like those worn by the Vaishnavas and Kabirpanthis. He also told his followers to drop their caste names and use ‘Satnami’ instead.
The Satnamis today
At the time of Ghasidas’ death, his following was estimated to be nearly a quarter million strong, belonging almost entirely to a particular scheduled caste. He stipulated a lineage of gurus who would lead the sect after him, starting with his son Balakdas.
According to Lamb, by the late 1800s, a two-tiered organisational structure developed with the guru at the top, and several village-level priests below him. This structure broadly persists even now. “These priests performed marriages, mediated disputes, meted out penance as well as acted as intermediaries in the organisation,” Lamb wrote.
Over the years, many Satnamis adopted caste-Hindu practices, beliefs and rituals, and came to see themselves as part of the Hindu religious mainstream. Some started to worship idols of Hindu Gods, and claimed to be of Rajput or even Brahmin lineage.
Satnamis are now an increasingly assertive political force. Satnami leaders enjoy clout over not just members of the sect, but also over the rest of Chhattisgarh’s 13% SC population.
The sect has been historically associated with the Congress, but since 2013, some Satnami gurus have shifted allegiance multiple times. The Satnami vote is today divided among various political parties in Chhattisgarh.
