Who they are
The Rāmnāmī Samāj arose in the Chhattisgarh region in the later nineteenth century among communities excluded from temple worship on grounds of caste. Its founding is associated with a man named Parasuram, and its founding claim is direct: if the name of Rāma is the essential thing, and the name is available to anyone who can say it, then exclusion from temples is beside the point.
The community's members tattoo the name — rāma, in Devanagari, repeated — on their bodies. In the fullest form the tattooing covers the whole body including the face, and it is understood as making the exclusion irreversible in the opposite direction: a person so marked cannot be told he does not belong to the tradition.
Practice
The Rāmnāmīs recite the Rāmcaritmānas, wear shawls printed with the name, and use a headdress of peacock feathers. They keep no images and build no temples, and they have no priesthood; gatherings are for recitation, and anyone may lead.
The full-body tattooing has declined among younger members, and the community is small. Its interest is out of proportion to its size, because it is one of the clearest examples anywhere of a devotional tradition used as an instrument against social exclusion, and because it takes the bhakti claim about the sufficiency of the name entirely literally.
The tattoo as argument
The Rāmnāmī practice takes a devotional claim and makes it physical. If the name is sufficient and available to anyone, then a body covered in the name cannot be excluded from the tradition by anybody, and the exclusion the community was founded against is answered in a form that cannot be revoked.
The fullest form, covering the whole body including the face, is called nakhśikh — nail to crown. It is now rare; younger members more often tattoo a few marks or wear the printed shawl.
Practice without a temple
The community keeps no images and builds no temples. Its gatherings, held annually and locally, are for recitation of the Rāmcaritmānas, and anyone may lead. The peacock-feather headdress and the name-printed shawl are the only insignia.
It is small, and its interest is out of proportion to its size: a case of bhakti's central claim being taken entirely literally and used as an instrument against caste exclusion.
Further reading
- Flood, Gavin. An Introduction to Hinduism. Cambridge University Press, 1996
- Kapur, Anuradha. Actors, Pilgrims, Kings and Gods: The Ramlila at Ramnagar. Seagull Books, 1990
- Klostermaier, Klaus K. A Survey of Hinduism. State University of New York Press, 2007
- Whaling, Frank. The Rise of the Religious Significance of Rama. Motilal Banarsidass, 1980
- van der Veer, Peter. Gods on Earth: The Management of Religious Experience and Identity in a North Indian Pilgrimage Centre. Athlone Press, 1988
See also
- Rāma — Rāma is the prince of Ayodhyā at the centre of the Rāmāyaṇa, exiled for fourteen years by his father's promise, and worshipped across the Hindu world as an incarnation of Viṣṇu and the model of righteous conduct.
- Rāmcaritmānas — The Rāmcaritmānas is Tulsīdās's retelling of the Rāmāyaṇa in Awadhi, begun at Ayodhyā in 1574, and the most widely recited work of North Indian devotional literature.
- Tulsīdās — Tulsīdās was the sixteenth-century poet-saint who composed the Rāmcaritmānas, the Awadhi Rāmāyaṇa that became the central devotional text of the Hindi-speaking north.
- Hanumān worship and the Hanumān Cālīsā — Hanumān is among the most widely worshipped deities in India, approached for strength, courage and protection, and the forty verses of the Hanumān Cālīsā are among the most recited texts in the country.
- Bhakti movement — The Bhakti movement was a devotional current in Hinduism, emerging in Tamil Nadu by the 6th century CE and spreading across the subcontinent through the 17th century, that emphasized personal devotion to a chosen deity over Brahminical ritual and caste hierarchy.
- The Rāmānandī sampradāya — The Rāmānandīs are the largest order of Vaiṣṇava ascetics in northern India, devoted to Rāma and Sītā, and the institutional carrier of Rāma devotion since the medieval period.
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.