Guru Ram Das Jiਗੁਰੂ ਰਾਮਦਾਸ ਜੀ

Early life

Guru Ram Das Ji was born as Jetha on the morning of 24 September 1534 in Chuna Mandi, Lahore, into a Sodhi Khatri family. His father, Hari Das, kept a small shop, and his mother, Mata Anup Devi, is also remembered in some accounts as Anup Kaur or Daya Kaur. His parents had been married for about twelve years before his birth, and he was named Jetha because he was the eldest of their children.

As a boy, Jetha once took the boiled grams his mother had given him to sell and instead fed them to sanyasis gathered on the bank of the Ravi river, an episode Sikhs recall as an echo of Guru Nanak Dev Ji's sacha sauda. Both his parents died when he was about seven, and his maternal grandmother took him to her village of Basarke, which was also the ancestral village of Guru Amar Das. To support her, Jetha sold boiled grams, chickpeas and wheat in the village market, and he was known for quietly giving his food away to passing holy men even when his grandmother scolded him for it.

In 1546, while Guru Amar Das was visiting Basarke, young Jetha followed him to Khadur, where he attended the sangats of Guru Angad Dev Ji. When Amar Das settled at Goindwal in 1552, Jetha moved with him. He cleaned the utensils of the langar, served drinking water to the sangat, and helped dig the Baoli Sahib, the stepped well at Goindwal. Under Amar Das's care he was also trained in North Indian classical music. Before becoming Guru, Jetha even represented the Sikhs before the Mughal emperor Akbar, when local Brahmins complained about the langar and the Sikhs' rejection of caste. He told the court that in the eyes of the divine all humankind is equal, and Akbar dismissed the complaint.

The test that chose a Guru

Guru Amar Das chose his successor through a test. He asked his two sons-in-law, Ramo and Jetha, each to build a platform worthy of the Guru's seat. Ramo built four platforms and gave up when none pleased the Guru. Jetha built seven, and when none of them satisfied Amar Das either, he bowed humbly and said he would keep trying to please his master. That spirit of unquestioning devotion decided the matter. In 1553 Jetha had married Amar Das's younger daughter Bibi Bhani, a match arranged by the Guru's wife Mata Mansa Devi, and their three sons were Prithi Chand, Mahadev and Arjan.

On 30 August 1574, Amar Das installed Jetha as the fourth Sikh Guru, renaming him Ram Das, servant of God. It confirmed again the Sikh principle that spiritual authority passes to the most worthy, not to kin. But the sons of Amar Das resented the choice, and Guru Ram Das Ji shifted his base to lands his predecessor had identified for a new town, Guru-ka-Chak.

Founding of Ramdaspur

Guru Ram Das Ji is credited in Sikh tradition with founding the city of Amritsar. Two accounts survive of how the land was acquired. A Gazetteer record says it was purchased with Sikh donations for 700 rupees from the owners of the village of Tung, while Sikh tradition holds that Guru Amar Das chose the site and called it Guru Da Chakk, asking Ram Das to build a new town with a man-made pool at its centre.

After his coronation, Guru Ram Das Ji founded Ramdaspur, the city of Ram Das, beside the pool. As instructed by his predecessor, he had two holy sarovars dug: the Ramdas Sarovar and the Amritsar Sarovar, the Pool of Nectar. He invited merchants and artisans from across the region to settle in the new town, and it began to grow into a self-sustaining Sikh city. The town expanded further under his son Guru Arjan, financed by donations and built by voluntary labour, until it became Amritsar, the holiest city of Sikhism, with the pool at its heart growing into the Harmandir Sahib complex.

He was also the first of Nanak's successors to mend relations with Sri Chand, Guru Nanak's son and founder of the Udasis, after long strained ties. When Sri Chand visited and remarked on the Guru's long beard, Guru Ram Das Ji replied that the beard was useful for wiping the feet of saints like him, and bent to do exactly that. Sri Chand understood at once why he was worthy of his father's seat.

How did Guru Ram Das Ji organise the Sikh community?

While Guru Amar Das had introduced the manji system of missionary dioceses, Guru Ram Das Ji extended it by adding the masand institution: trusted Sikh leaders living far from the Guru who led distant congregations, kept them connected to the centre, and collected dasvandh, a tenth of income, to fund the community's work and the building of the holy pool.

Like his predecessor, he encouraged widow remarriage, a bold stand in sixteenth-century Punjab. He denounced superstition, the caste system and pilgrimages to holy places, teaching instead that God is found through honest work, remembrance of the Name and service. He also stressed keertan, the singing of hymns, which remains at the heart of Sikh worship. The scholar Bhai Gurdas, a relative of Guru Amar Das, joined him during these years and helped advance the Sikh cause through his writing.

Why are the Lavan so important?

Guru Ram Das Ji was a celebrated poet. He composed 638 hymns, about a tenth of the Guru Granth Sahib, writing in 30 ragas of Indian classical music. His most famous composition is the Lavan, the four wedding hymns in Suhi mode. In a Sikh wedding, the bride and groom walk four slow circumambulations around the Guru Granth Sahib as each stanza is sung, binding their union to the Guru's word. The Lavan, together with parts of the Anand composition, became the basis of the Anand Karaj ceremony, and its use was later recognised in law through the Anand Marriage Act of 1909.

His bani also lives in the daily prayers of the Sikhs. Verses of Guru Ram Das Ji are part of Rehras Sahib and Kirtan Sohila, and his compositions are sung every day in the Harmandir Sahib. His most quoted verse calls the Sikh to rise before dawn, meditate on the Name and bathe in the ambrosial pool.

Family and succession

Guru Ram Das Ji's marriage to Bibi Bhani is remembered as a model of Sikh family life, and he wrote as a poet for householders, not for ascetics withdrawn from the world. Of their three sons, the eldest, Prithi Chand, expected to inherit the Guruship. But Guru Ram Das Ji tested his sons as his own master had tested him, and found the youngest, Arjan, the most spiritually fit. In 1581 he installed Arjan as the fifth Guru. It was the first time the Guruship passed from father to son, though still on the principle of merit. From that point the fifth through the tenth Gurus were all direct descendants of Guru Ram Das Ji.

Later life and legacy

Guru Ram Das Ji died on 1 September 1581 at Goindwal, the town of his predecessor, after only seven years as Guru. Those years were transformative. He gave the Sikhs their holy city, their wedding hymns, the masand organisation and a clear voice against caste and superstition.

Every Sikh who marries to the recitation of the Lavan, every pilgrim who bathes in the Amrit Sarovar, and every resident of Amritsar lives in the legacy of Guru Ram Das Ji. The city he founded as Ramdaspur is now one of the great religious centres of the world, and the Golden Temple at its heart stands on the ground he chose.