Within the Kabir Panth, Kabir Chaura in Varanasi and the matha at Maghar are revered as two axial points of Kabir’s earthly journey, shaping both memory and authority within the tradition. Kabir Chaura, situated in Varanasi, is regarded as the principal and oldest seat of the Panth, tracing its lineage to Kabir’s early disciples and serving as a “mother matha” for many subordinate centers. It stands in the city where Kabir is believed to have lived and taught, and where many of his songs and challenges to ritualism and sectarianism are located in collective memory. As a pilgrimage center, it houses manuscripts, relics, and oral traditions, and functions as a living hub of spiritual discourse and practice. The mahant of Kabir Chaura holds particular prestige, often providing guidance on doctrinal and organizational matters, so that the institutional and the spiritual are closely intertwined there.

Maghar, by contrast, is honored as the place of Kabir’s final departure from the physical world, and its matha marks his samādhi and tomb-like memorial. This site is associated with the famous account that flowers were found instead of his body, and it is venerated by both Hindu and Muslim followers, reflecting the shared claim upon his legacy. The matha at Maghar thus becomes a powerful emblem of Kabir’s message of religious unity and his refusal to be confined within a single communal identity. At the same time, Maghar’s traditional reputation as an inauspicious place to die, contrasted with the auspiciousness of Varanasi, gives Kabir’s choice of death there a profound doctrinal resonance. For Kabir Panthis, this act is read as a living critique of ritual geography and the idea that liberation depends on dying in a particular city, affirming instead the primacy of inner devotion and direct realization.

Taken together, Kabir Chaura and the Maghar matha frame Kabir’s life and passing as a continuous testimony to nirguṇa bhakti that transcends caste, creed, and sacred locations. Kabir Chaura embodies his active teaching presence and the organized transmission of his words, while Maghar embodies his final witness against ritualism and sectarian boundaries. Both sites function as major tirthas for Kabir Panthis, places where community identity is renewed and where the tension between form and formlessness, institution and inner experience, is held in creative balance. In the spiritual imagination of the Panth, these two mathas do not merely preserve history; they invite seekers to contemplate how Kabir’s life, from Varanasi to Maghar, enacts the very truths his verses proclaim.