Sant Chokhamela

01A family of saints at Mangalvedha

Chokhamela was born at Mehuna Raja, in today’s Buldhana district, and lived at Mangalvedha, near Pandharpur. He was a Mahar, of a community then held untouchable, and his work was to guard and labour in the fields of others. His wife Soyarabai, their son Karmamela, his sister Nirmala and her husband Banka, Soyarabai’s brother, were all devotees of Vitthal, and all of them left abhangs; the Varkaris count every one of them among the saints. On a visit to Pandharpur Chokha heard the kirtan of Namdev, and took him as his guru. He then moved to Pandharpur to be near the Lord.

02Across the river

The keepers of the temple would not let him in, nor stand at its door, so he built a hut on the far side of the Bhima and sang to Vitthal from there. His abhangs say it plainly: the body is unclean, they tell him, but who in the world is clean? The sugarcane is crooked, he sings, but its juice is not; the bow is crooked, but not its arrow; why look at the outer form? Varkari kathas tell that Vitthal crossed the river to eat with him, and that when the priests beat Chokha for wearing the Lord’s necklace, which Vitthal himself had given him, the Lord bore the bruises. One of his best-loved songs is ‘Abir gulal udhalit rang’, the colours of abir and gulal flying as the pilgrims dance.

Place · Temple grew from at least the 12th–13th centuries; later Maratha additionsVitthal–Rukmini Temple, PandharpurThe home of Vithoba on the banks of the Chandrabhaga, goal of the Warkari wari on Ashadhi Ekadashi. For eight hundred years Maharashtra’s saints have walked here singing.Read →

03The bones that chanted ‘Vitthal’

He died at Mangalvedha when a wall he was building with other labourers fell and crushed them. The Varkari katha says that Namdev went to gather his remains and knew them from the others because the bones were still chanting ‘Vitthal, Vitthal’. He carried them to Pandharpur and buried them at the foot of the steps of the Vitthal temple, at the door Chokha had never been allowed to cross. The samadhi is there today, in front of the eastern gate, and every pilgrim who enters bows to it first. In the 20th century B. R. Ambedkar dedicated his book The Untouchables (1948) to the memory of Nandanar, Ravidas and Chokhamela. The festival of Chokhamela is kept at Deulgaon Raja, near his birthplace.