कबीर

Kabir was a mystic poet-saint of the Bhakti movement whose exact life dates remain a matter of scholarly debate: some historians place him between 1398 and 1448, while others favour 1440 to 1518. Tradition holds that he was born in Varanasi and found as an infant near Lahartara Lake by a Muslim weaver couple, Niru and Nima, who raised him; the Kabir Chaura locality of Varanasi, where a monastery associated with him still stands, is traditionally linked to his life there. He is said to have become a disciple of the Bhakti saint-poet Ramananda.

Kabir composed extemporaneous verses called "banis" in forms including dohe (couplets), sakhi, and shabad, using a mixed vernacular (Sadhukkadi) drawing on Khadi Boli, Braj, Bhojpuri, Awadhi, and other dialects — deliberately favouring language accessible to ordinary people over that of religious elites. Roughly 80 works are attributed to him, preserved in collections such as the Kabir Bijak, Kabir Parachai, Sakhi Granth, and the Sikh Guru Granth Sahib (Adi Granth). His verses rejected the ritualism of both Hinduism and Islam, emphasising direct, personal experience of the divine over external religious practice.

Rather than any film role of his own, Kabir is credited in Hindi film and devotional music as the original lyricist wherever his dohe and bhajans have been set to music and recorded, a practice running from early Hindi cinema through countless later bhajan and ghazal albums. Both Hindu and Muslim communities have claimed him as a spiritual figure; his following continues today through the Kabir Panth, and his verses remain part of the Guru Granth Sahib and the wider North Indian Bhakti tradition.