Three PAC battalions named after women warriors from Scheduled Caste and OBC communities, a grand memorial for a medieval Pasi king, and the ongoing restoration of a 15th-century Bhakti saint's birthplace — Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has outlined a raft of heritage initiatives aimed squarely at communities whose histories have long sat outside the mainstream of state commemoration.

In a post from the Chief Minister's Office of Uttar Pradesh on Monday, 26 October 2026, CM Yogi detailed work already underway: 'सीर गोवर्धनपुर, वाराणसी में सद्गुरु रविदास जी महाराज की पावन जन्मभूमि के पुनरुद्धार का कार्य आगे बढ़ाया जा चुका है' ('The restoration of the sacred birthplace of Sadguru Ravidas Ji Maharaj in Seer Govardhanpur, Varanasi has been taken forward'). The announcement bundled together cultural revival and institutional renaming in a single, deliberate sweep.

Three battalions, three veeranganas, three communities

The most striking institutional move is the formation of three Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) battalions — each named after a woman who fought in the 1857 revolt. Lucknow gets a battalion honouring Veerangana Uda Devi Pasi, the Pasi-community fighter who held off British soldiers from the trees of Sikandar Bagh. Badaun gets one in the name of Veerangana Avantibai Lodhi, the Lodhi queen who led resistance from Ramgarh before choosing death over capture. And Gorakhpur gets a battalion named after Veerangana Jhalakari Bai Kori, the Kori-community soldier who fought alongside Rani Lakshmibai during the siege of Jhansi.

Naming active security units after these figures is not merely symbolic. It places SC and OBC warrior women inside a living institutional framework — every official order, every parade, every recruitment drive will carry their names forward. That is a very different kind of remembrance from a statue in a park.

Seer Govardhanpur and the Sant Ravidas legacy

Seer Govardhanpur, a locality in Varanasi, is traditionally regarded as the birthplace of Sant Ravidas — the 15th–16th century Bhakti poet and social reformer from the Chamar community whose verses are included in the Guru Granth Sahib and who remains one of the most revered figures among Dalit communities across northern India. The restoration of his birthplace site has been a recurring policy commitment of the Yogi administration since 2017, forming part of a broader effort to develop religious and cultural infrastructure linked to Bhakti saints from marginalised communities.

Maharaja Bijli Pasi's fort gets a grand makeover

In Lucknow, a 'grand memorial' (भव्य स्मारक) is being built for Maharaja Bijli Pasi, the medieval Pasi-community ruler whose fort still stands on the city's outskirts. The fort itself is being given what the CM described as a 'भव्य स्वरूप' — a grand new form. For the Pasi community, one of Uttar Pradesh's largest Scheduled Caste groups, the rehabilitation of Bijli Pasi as a regal, commemorable ancestor carries significant cultural weight.

Taken together, these announcements fit a pattern the Yogi government has cultivated consistently: expanding the official heritage map of Uttar Pradesh to include SC and OBC figures who participated in the anti-colonial struggle or the Bhakti reform movement, communities whose contributions were for long either absent from textbooks or confined to footnotes. The question now is delivery — completion timelines for the Varanasi birthplace and the Lucknow memorial will be the real measure of whether the ambition matches the announcement.