 These are legends where Ravidas is victorious because God intervened with miracles such as making a stone float in water, or making river Ganges to reverse course and flow upstream.David Lorenzen similarly states that poetry attributed to Ravidas, and championed by "Ravidasi" (his followers) from the 17th- through the 20th-century, have a strong anti-Brahminical and anti-communal theme.The legends, suggests Lorenzen, cannot be separated from the power and political situation of this era, and they reflect a strong element of social and religious dissent by groups marginalised during a period when Indian society was under the Islamic rule and later the colonial rule.