The Karnataka cabinet, on Thursday, gave its nod to declaring Basavanna, the 12th century social reformer and Lingayat icon, as the state's cultural ambassador.
A delegation of Lingayat seers from various mutts led by JSS mutt seer Shivarathri Deshikendra Swami who met the chief minister earlier this month had made the demand.
Ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, the move to declare Basavanna, a Lingayat icon, as the cultural ambassador, might benefit the Congress. The party has been constantly wooing the politically and numerically strong Lingayat community, the traditional votebank of the BJP. The party had lost the favour among the Lingayats after Veerendra Patil (a Lingayat leader) was removed as the CM in 1990.
In the 2018 Assembly polls, the Congress' bid to lure the community by supporting the Lingayat Movement demanding a separate religion tag had backfired and more than 14 Congress ministers had lost the seat. However, the 2023 polls saw the community disenchanted with the BJP after the Lingayat strongman B.S. Yediyurappa stepped down as the CM.
The exit of prominent Lingayat leaders Jagadish Shettar and Laxman Savadi after being denied the tickets to contest the polls too dented the poll prospects of the BJP in the Lingayat belt - north and central Karnataka regions. The saffron party, by appointing Yediyurappa's MLA son B.Y. Vijayendra as the party's state president is hoping to win back the community. Meanwhile, the Siddaramaiah government is in a dilemma over releasing the caste survey amid opposition from the dominant communities - Lingayats and Vokkaligas who suspect the report is flawed and has undercounted its population and it might lead to major political ramifications.
The Congress government's move to honour a Lingayat icon might made political sense to the ruling party head of the Lok Sabha polls this May.
Who was Basavanna?
Basavanna, also known as Basaveshwara, was born to a Brahmin couple from Bijapur district in AD 1131. He studied Vedas, puranas and shastras, and became proficient in Sanskrit and Kannada.
Basavanna rejected the idea of caste, polytheism, vedic rituals, idol worship and temple-centric worship. He detested the exploitation of non-Brahmins in the name of God, and started preaching and practising socialism.
He addressed his followers as 'sharanas' or the citizens of a welfare state, who wrote vachanas (verses) in Kannada, not Sanskrit. The verses propagated reformist ideology.
Basavanna also established the "Anubhava Mantapa", where sharanas discussed socio-economic and political issues. Those discussions made it to the vachanas, too.
Earlier, Rural Development Minister Priyank Kharge, in a letter, had made an appeal to the CM to declare the Lingayat icon as the cultural ambassador saying, "Basavanna invoked a social consciousness by advocating the principles - "Kaayakave Kailaasa" (work is worship) and "Arivey guru" (knowledge is the teacher). It will be an honour for the Congress government to declare Basavanna as the cultural ambassador of Karnataka just as Maharashtra has declared Chhatrapati Shivaji as their cultural ambassador," said Kharge.
Further, Kharge pointed out that Basavanna was the first to introduce the concept of democracy in India through the 'Anubhava Mantap', and also the first leader to raise his voice against untouchability. "He brought together 770 'Sharanas', who enriched the Kannada language through the 'vachanas'(poems) that gave the message of equality. If Basavanna created equal opportunity to people of all the communities at the Anubhava Mantapa, Dr B.R. Ambedkar through the Constitution, established equality," he added.