Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram

The story

"Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram", also called Ram Dhun, is a bhajan, a Hindu devotional song, in praise of the god Rama. Its origins are not clear. It is believed to have been written by the poet Tulsidas or drawn from his Ramcharitmanas, or to come from a 17th-century sung prayer by the Marathi saint-poet Ramdas. It is also said to come from the Nama Ramayana attributed to Lakshmanacharya, a Sanskrit devotional song of 108 verses that tells the Ramayana through the names of Rama; only some versions of the Nama Ramayana contain this verse. The historian Anthony Parel writes that Gandhi preferred a legend in which Tulsidas, on pilgrimage to the temple of Dakore, refused to bow until Vishnu showed himself as Rama.

The tune widely sung today was set by Vishnu Digambar Paluskar in Raga Mishra Gara. Mahatma Gandhi made the bhajan widely known. His version had an "ecumenical flavour": he added words saying that the Ishwar of the Hindus and the Allah of the Muslims are one and the same, to spread a message of reconciliation between the two communities. The song was sung during the Salt March of 1930 and was used to project a composite, secular vision of Indian society. After his return from Noakhali, Gandhi changed the refrain again so that names of Hindu gods stood beside Islamic names of God.

The changes were criticised from both sides. Some Muslims resented that Allah had been placed on a level with Ram, and some Hindus objected to Islamic elements in a Hindu bhajan. Srila Prabhupada had no interest in Gandhi's version, holding that it departed from the original devotion for political ends.

The song has remained a subject of dispute. In September 2022 a government directive asked students in Kashmir to recite it as an "all faith prayer" for Gandhi's 153rd birth anniversary; Mehbooba Mufti called this part of a Hindutva agenda, Farooq Abdullah rejected her claim, and the religious organisations of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Ulema asked for it to stop. In December 2024, at a BJP event in Patna marking Atal Bihari Vajpayee's 100th birth anniversary, part of the audience protested when a folk singer sang Gandhi's line naming Ishwar and Allah, and she was asked to apologise; Shahnawaz Hussain called the disruption "the height of intolerance". In December 2011 schools in Greendale, Wisconsin, removed it from their concerts after parents objected to its religious content.

The bhajan appears in many Indian films, from Bharat Milap (1942) and Jagriti (1954) to Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) and Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006), where it is an important motif, and in the British-Indian film Gandhi (1982). Pete Seeger recorded it on his album Strangers and Cousins in 1964.

What it says

A devotional chant built on the repeated names and titles of the god Rama and of Sita, sung as an act of worship. In Gandhi's version it adds that Ishwar and Allah are names of the one God. The mood is calm and meditative, suited to group singing.

The words

The words of this song are in the public domain, but no free, reliable edition of them has been found yet to import them from, and the Institute never types a song’s words from memory. “What it says” above tells what they are about.