ABSTRACT
The V1lmı-ki community is a caste-based group that takes V1lmı-ki, the alleged author of the R1m1ya7a, as its Gur3. V1lmı-kis adamantly affirm that their Gur3 was also of their z1t. Importantly, V1lmı-ki’s religious background was Hindu. Indeed, his alleged composition, the R1m1ya7a, is an important text for popular Hinduism to the present day. The anomalies this presents to a Sikh identity among the V1lmı-kis is an interesting issue. Today the majority of V1lmı-kis, like the Ravid1sı-s, have moved away from a Sikh orientation into a specifically V1lmı-ki recognition. The historical connection of the V1lmı-kis with the developing Panth arises
significantly from the event in history when the severed head of Gur3 Tegh Bah1dur was carried by a member of the lower z1ts, Bh1ı-Jait1 (also known as Bh1ı-Rangret1) and taken to the young Gobind D1s. It was as a witness to Rangret1’s courage in taking the Gur3’s head from the Mughal invaders, that the child Gobind spoke the words: ‘Rangreti Gur3 ki beti’ ‘the Rangreti1s are the children of God’. It was following this event that large numbers of Rangreti1s took amrit and entered the Panth in the hope of achieving equality with the other Sikh z1ts, a hope enhanced by the fact that gurb17ı-stresses the irrelevancy of z1t. Unfortunately, the stigma attached to untouchability, as seen in the case of the Ravid1sı-s, endured in the Panth. Moreover, the distinctiveness of the lower z1ts from the upper was significantly retained due to the fact that the Rangreti1 converts were distinguished under the term ‘mazhabı-Sikhs’. This term, although translated as ‘the religious ones’, nevertheless indicated that such persons were of a lower z1t. A major influx into the Panth by the mazhabı-s took place during the early
decades of the twentieth century.1 The mazhabı-s had already enjoyed a marked recognition in Sikhism since the time of Gur3 Gobind Singh as a result of the actions of Bh1ı-Jait1. On their conversion to Sikhism, the initiates were probably initially referred to collectively as Rangreti1 Sikhs. Eventually the term began to be used synonymously with mazhabı-. It is not very clear from which period in Sikh history the term mazhabı-actually originated,2 it was not in regular usage in the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. Therefore, initially the term Rangreti1 was probably the more usual term to refer to the low-caste converts into Sikhism.3 The very fact that the term mazhabı-was coined to separate the higher castes from the lower, illustrates, very clearly, that in practice the Panth was, and still is, ignoring the egalitarian teachings of gurb17ı-.
