To Bengalureans who grew up in the 1980s, Republic Day brings a specific whiff of nostalgia – watching, on Doordarshan, the RD parade, live streamed from foggy Rajpath. That tradition is now past, but a more local RD tradition endures – the excitement around the Flower Show at Lalbagh. The show’s theme this year, so the Horticultural Department tells us, is: ‘Philosopher-poet-saint Basavanna, and vachana literature.’
That’s ambitious, but there is no denying the ever-present need to showcase Basavanna’s liberal, inclusive ideas in every kind of forum. Especially because, despite his likenesses gracing two prominent locations in the city – the eponymous Basaveshwara Circle in High Grounds, and more recently, the forecourt of the Vidhana Soudha – so few Bengalureans know much about the life and work of this towering public figure who drove radical social reform in 12th century Karnataka.
Born circa 1106 to a Shaiva Brahmin couple of Basavana Bagewadi (in Bijapur district), then part of the powerful Western Chalukya empire, Basava, so the story goes, rejected the trappings of his caste and left home as a boy to seek guidance at the feet of Ishanya Guru at Kudalasangama (in Bagalkote district). Here, at the confluence of the Krishna and Malaprabha rivers, he spent many happy years, exploring metaphysics alongside more temporal subjects, equipping himself for a life in the world.
So deeply would Kudalasangama impact Basava that he would not only dedicate all his vachanas – moral and philosophical ideas, poetically expressed in colloquial Kannada – to Kudalasangama Deva, his name for the formless Absolute, but would also return here for solace in times of doubt and distress. Of such times there were many, for Basava challenged social inequities, ritualistic worship, animal sacrifice, and caste and gender discrimination at every turn, which did not endear him to the self-appointed guardians of social order.
{{/usCountry}}So deeply would Kudalasangama impact Basava that he would not only dedicate all his vachanas – moral and philosophical ideas, poetically expressed in colloquial Kannada – to Kudalasangama Deva, his name for the formless Absolute, but would also return here for solace in times of doubt and distress. Of such times there were many, for Basava challenged social inequities, ritualistic worship, animal sacrifice, and caste and gender discrimination at every turn, which did not endear him to the self-appointed guardians of social order.
{{/usCountry}}Fortunately, he had the support of the Kalachuri king Bijjala II, a Chalukya feudatory who toppled his masters and occupied their capital of Kalyana (today, Basavakalyana, in Bidar) in CE 1156. Basava served Bijjala as his Prime Minister, using his position to enable social change. One of his firmest convictions, Kaayakave Kailasa (work is worship), dignified the meanest work – and its practitioners – garnering him a large and loyal following among the working classes. The other, that worship did not need temples, saw him encourage his followers, the Sharanas, or Lingayatas, to wear an ishtalinga, the symbol of a personal god, on their person, so that they could worship anywhere.
Basava’s Anubhava Mantapa (‘Pavilion of Experience’), as much a democratic concept as a physical space, offered people of all castes and genders a platform to express themselves in speech and poetry – this last fostered a genre of Kannada devotional and philosophical literature, rooted in social reality, called vachana sahitya. This ‘spiritual Parliament’ was presided over by the low-caste mystic-saint Allamaprabhu, and included the convention-defying female poet-saint, Akka Mahadevi. Thus empowered, the Sharanas began to rise against injustice: a revolution was ripe in Kalyana.
The tipping point was Basavanna officiating at the wedding of a Brahmin girl to a low-caste boy, circa 1167. Unable to hold off the orthodox factions any longer, and furious with Basava for overstepping, Bijjala allowed the brutal large-scale massacre of Sharanas to happen on his watch, and was assassinated. Horrified, Basava fled to Kudalasangama, where he died soon after.
Today, the Lingayatas make up about 17% of Karnataka’s population, and the state has elected ten Chief Ministers from the community. What really deserves celebrating, however, is that, some 900 years after they were so violently opposed, Basava’s humanistic ideas endure, and continue to inspire. And not just flower show themes, either.
(Roopa Pai is a writer who has carried on a longtime love affair with her hometown Bengaluru)