A Devotional Order That Armed Itself Like Its Shaiva Rivals

Tradition holds that Ramananda taught disciples across caste and even religious lines, a memory that later devotional literature reinforced by associating figures such as Kabir and Raidas with his circle, though the precise historical detail of these connections is less certain than the tradition's enduring insistence on his inclusiveness. Centred on Varanasi and, above all, on devotion to Rama, the order Ramananda's teaching produced grew over the centuries that followed into the largest body of Vaishnava ascetics in North India, a growth that brought it into the same competitive pilgrimage environment the Shaiva Dashanami monks already occupied.

The Ramanandi response mirrored the Dashanami one directly: the order developed its own militarised ascetic regiments, generally called Bairagi or Vairagi Naga sadhus, who trained for armed self defence and for contesting bathing rights and precedence at major pilgrimage gatherings against the older Shaiva akharas, a rivalry between Vaishnava and Shaiva armed ascetics that shaped Kumbh Mela politics for centuries. The order's continuing centrality to Ayodhya, one of Hinduism's most contested and most sacred pilgrimage sites, keeps the Ramanandi Sampradaya at the centre of Vaishnava devotional life in North India today much as its size alone would suggest.