The life of Kabir is totally unknown to the humankind. According to tradition he was the illegitimate son of a Brahmana widow. To hide her shame she threw the child in a pond called the Lahar Talao at Banaras. A Muslim weaver named Niru saw him and took pity on him and carried him to his home, where his wife brought him up with great affection and care. When he grew up he took up his father`s trade but found time to moralize and philosophise.

Kabir lived in the 15th century after Christ, which was a time of great political upheaval in India. Kabir`s life was centred around Kashi, also called Banaras (Varanasi) Legend has it that he was actually the son of a Brahmin widow who abandoned him and that he was found by a Muslim weaver named Niru, who adopted the boy and taught him the weaver`s trade. Hindu saints started bhakti movement, while Sufi mysticism by Muslim saints in medieval India (1200-1700).

Kabir is a firm advocate of ahimsa. His doctrine extends even to the non-destruction of flowers. Among the fifty commandments laid down for the followers of Kabir, vegetarianism is one of them. For Kabir, moral life involves adherence to ahimsa. In common with all monastic, ascetic or otherworldly sects, Kabir does not think well of women. There is almost a tirade against them in the hymns of Kabir.

Kabir believed in sell-surrender and God`s bhakti. The Kabirpanthis follow a life of singing the praises of God, prayers and a simple and pure life of devotion. Kabir recommends ceaseless singing of God`s praises. He virtually suggests withdrawal from the world. He is against all ritualistic and ascetic methods as means to salvation. It is true that Kabir refers to some yogic terms in describing the meditation and mystic methods of the yogis. But, there is no ground to suggest that he himself recommends the yogic path. In fact, far from recommending yoga, he is quite strong in condemning ascetic or yogic methods and says that yogis, in their meditations, become prey to maya.

The moral tone is quite strong in Kabir`s hymns. "Kabir deck thyself with garments of love. Love them is given honour whose body and soul speak the truth." "The ruby of goodness is greater than all the mines of rubies, all the wealth of three worlds resides in the goodness of heart. When the wealth of contentment is won, all other wealth is as dust." "Where there is mercy, there is strength, where there is forgiveness there is He." "The man who is kind and practices righteousness, who remains passive in the affairs of the world, who considers creatures of the world as his own self, he attains the immortal Being; the true God is ever with him. Kabir suggests inward worship and remembrance of God. For him, true worship is only inwards. He clearly suggests moral discrimination between good and bad deeds.

His Teachings: He tried to teach Hindu-Muslim Unity. He tried for a synthesis of Islam and Hinduism by preaching communal harmony, and stressing those virtues, which were common to both religions. The whole background of Kabir`s thought was Hindu. He speaks of Rama. He seeks freedom from transmigration and hopes to attain the true path by means of Bhakti. But he makes no distinction between the Hindu and the Turk. He used to say that they are pot of the same clay and who are striving by different routes to reach the same goal. The constructive part of Kabira`s mission was to lie out a common path on which both Hindus and Muslims could read together. According to Kabir, the Guru is as important as God Himself. He says `Consider the Guru as Govinda or God.`

He was against idol worship and has an aversion for religious controversy and rituals and superstitions as well. He considered it as useless to visits to places of pilgrimage. He equally condemned the Muslim rituals and hajj to Makka. He remonstrated the Muslims for slaughter of cows and Brahmans for performing sacrifices involving slaughter of animals. He ridiculed the Muslim practice of circumcision and Brahmins for wearing the sacred thread. He also criticized the Sraddha feasts.

Kabir refused to accept caste system by birth. He refused to recognize the superiority of Brahmanas as a caste. He advocated perfect equality of Sudras and Brahmins. Both were born in the same way. He believes that all are children of the same God. According to Kabir one who meditates on God is a Brahmin because of his good conduct and not because he was born in a Brahmin family.

The main theme of Kabir`s social philosophy was that humanity is a sacred trust of the Almighty. The influence of his teachings spread to Punjab, Gujarat and Bengal and it continued to spread even under the Mughal rule.

Kabira`s poetry is steeped in Bhakti and also the religion of love. Written in the popular Hindi, the songs of Kabir are deliberately addressed to the people. He vehemently criticized the Hindu priests and the qazis for asking people to practice rituals. He finds them redundant. The God whom he proclaimed was neither in Kaba nor in Kailasa. He believed in the simple union with Divine Reality. According to him he was independent both of ritual and of bodily austerities.

His code of Ethics was also unique. He condemned pride and selfishness. One should cultivate the quality of humility. He appreciated the simplicity of the poor and condemned the vanity and pride of the rich. By such condemnation Kabir preached the common brotherhood of man. According to him economic inequalities are due to one`s own actions. Man should always do good deeds to gain their reward. Kabira despised a miser and advised the rich to be generous and benevolent to the needy.

Kabira`s teachings were directed to the attainment of two main objectives namely inward spirituality to the exclusion of outward ritualism and the conciliation between the Hindus and the Muslims. He condemned plurality of gods, criticized dogmatism of every religion and stressed oneness of God. He was a great social reformer. His teachings had a profound influence on the masses. His disciples are popularly known as Kabir-panthis.

It is not surprising that Kabir`s satire was brought to bear not simply on the vices and weaknesses of men but reached through and beyond them to the very system themselves. It was the authority of Vedas and Quran that more then the authority of Brahmin or Qazi which Kabir attacked. He rebelled against the pretension of resolving by the means of books or by way of authority, the mystery of human conditions and the problem of liberation (Moksha). He spent his last 40 days living in a place where it was believed that if you die you will born as a Donkey in next life.

The cosmological views of Kabir give a clear clue to his worldview. He finds Niranjana to be the creator of the world; maya or woman. And this woman stands between man and god. She is there to entice him away from Him. Kabir composed no systematic treatise; rather his work consists of many short didactic poems, often expressed in terse vigorous language in the form of Padas, Dohas and Ramainis (forms of poetry in Indian languages). Besides his work recorded in 1604 A.D., in Guru Granth Sahib by Guru Arjan Dev, Nanak V and preserved inviolate since, two other collections exist - Kabir Granthavali, and Bijak. In his poems, he was quick to tell the illustrations of moral and spiritual truth in the incidents of everyday life and many of his similes and metaphors are very striking.