This poem from the Adi Granth depicts the condition of the priests and religious leaders who dominated the social and religious life of Banaras during Kabir's time. Kabir exposes their hypocrisy and rejects their claims to holiness, condemning their insistence on the so-called purity of their food which has to be cooked on a fire of washed wood and is not allowed to be touched by others. Their assumed piety and superiority is just a way of beguiling and cheating simple people to earn wealth and respect. Kabir calls them the thugs of Banaras.

Concluding the poem, Kabir hints that such priests and religious leaders will continue to come to this world of pain and suffering again and again. Those who seek the shelter of a Master and follow his directions will never return to the world and will gain release from the cycle of birth and death.

They put on loincloths
Of three and a half yards
And sacred threads of threefold strings,
They display rosaries around their necks
And in their hands, glittering brass jugs;
Call them not the saints of God,
They are the Banaras thugs.

I like not such 'saints'
Who devour basketfuls of pedas.
They scour their pots
Before they put them on the stove,
They wash their wood before lighting it.
They dig up the earth
And make two fireplaces,
But hesitate not to swallow a man whole.
They are sinners, guilty of devious deeds,
Yet call themselves pious and pure.
They go strutting about with a haughty mien;
Their deeds are the ruin of even their kin.
They hasten where their minds direct them,
According to its dictates they act.

Says Kabir: He who meets the Master
Never returns to this world of misery.

A.G., Asa, p. 475
Gaj sādhe tai tai dhotiā