Bhagat Namdev Ji was a calico printer of Maharashtra, a Shimpi by caste, and a central figure of the Varkari tradition at Pandharpur. He has 61 hymns in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji.
He spent the last part of his life in Punjab, at Ghuman in Gurdaspur district, where he is said to have lived some twenty years. A shrine to him stands there and is maintained by both Sikhs and Marathi pilgrims, and a Marathi-speaking delegation comes to it annually.
His Punjabi period is why some of his compositions are in a Punjabi-inflected language rather than Marathi, and it is the reason a thirteenth-century Maharashtrian saint is a Punjab village name.
Ghuman also produced Bhai Vir Singh's family and hosts a Punjabi literary conference. The village is one of the few places where the Maharashtra and Punjab devotional traditions physically meet.
Sixty-one of his compositions are in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, more than any Bhagat except Kabir Ji, spread across eighteen ragas.
The Marathi tradition and the Punjabi tradition preserve different bodies of his work and the relationship between them has been argued over for a century.
The gurdwara at Ghuman marks where he lived and died and a fair is held there each January. Marathi pilgrims come to it.