Recently, a large number of Panchamasali Lingayat protesters held a massive protest in front of the Karnataka Legislature complex in Belagavi. Who are the Lingayats?
Why in News?
Earlier this week, a large number of protesters of Panchamasali Lingayats, a sub-caste of Karnataka’s dominant Lingayat community, held a massive protest in front of the Karnataka Legislature complex in Belagavi
where the winter session is currently in progress, in connection with their demand for inclusion of Panchamasalis in the 2A OBC category—which provides 15% reservation—instead of their existing 3B category with a 5% quota.
Lingayats
The Lingayats are a dominant community who make up nearly 17% of Karnataka’s six crore population. Officially classified as Hindu sub-caste ‘Veerashaiva Lingayats’, Lingayats are followers of Basavanna, a 12th century philosopher-saint.
The emergence of the Lingayat sect can be located within the larger trend of Bhakti movements that had swept across South India from the 8th century AD onwards.
At present, the Lingayat community is an amalgamation of many sub-castes. Of these the agriculturalist Panchamasalis are the largest, making up nearly 70% of the Lingayat population. They claim to number around 85 lakh, or about 14% of Karnataka’s population of roughly six crore.
Some famous personalities in Karnataka who are also followers of the Lingayat tradition include former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa and scholar M.M. Kalburgi.
The Panchamasali Lingayats have been demanding increased reservation for two decades now, it came to the forefront in 2020. The agitation was called off in July 2021 based on assurances by then CM Yediyurappa on the floor of the Assembly. A three-member committee was constituted under the chairmanship of retired High Court judge Subhash Adi to look into the demands.
Bhakti Movement
The Bhakti tradition was a social reform movement that developed around Hindu Gods and Goddesses but split away from the Hindu fold by offering a path to spirituality regardless of their caste and creed.
In a way, they were movements that took birth within Hinduism but strove to rectify what the followers saw as the unjust practices within the tradition.
Basavanna
Basavanna was a social reformer, an activist and a saint from 12th century, who started a radical anti-caste movement which rejected orthodox ritualistic Hindu practices in favour of a more personal, affective relationship with God, specifically Lord Shiva.
He was a minister to Bijjala, a Kalachurya king who succeeded the Chalukyas and ruled from Kalyana. The Sharana movement he presided over attracted people from all castes, and like most strands of the Bhakti movement, produced a corpus of literature, the vachanas, that unveiled the spiritual universe of the Veerashaiva saints.
Basavanna’s vision of a societal order was one based on human freedom, equality, rationality, and brotherhood. He and his followers spread their ideas through vachanas (prose-lyrics) and their prime target was the caste hierarchy which they rejected with full force.
In one of his vachanas, Basavanna asserts that “the birthless has no caste distinctions, no ritual pollution.” He rejected the Hindu Brahmanical ritualism and its adherence to sacred texts like the Vedas.
The egalitarianism of Basavanna’s Sharana movement was too radical for its times. As his fame spread, people flocked to Kalyana to see him. He set up the Anubhava Mandapa, where the Sharanas, drawn from different castes and communities, gathered and engaged in learning and discussions.
In contemporary times, followers of Basavanna’s vision is one of the most influential groups in Karnataka. They revere both God Shiva and Basavanna.
Veerashaivism
Veerashaivism is a Shaiva sect within Hinduism and is predominantly located in Karnataka.
Adrija Roychowdhury writes in “The Lingayat sect: Why Hindu and why not Hindu?”- “Veerashaivism emerges in the sixteenth century and the followers claim that the philosophers of the twelfth-thirteenth centuries to be their forebearers. They claim that Basavanna was not the founder of the Lingayat tradition, but rather a reformer of an already existing religious tradition which they call Veerashaivism,” says historian Manu Devadevan.
The Veerashaivas accept the Vedic texts and Hindu practices such as caste and gender discrimination.
The Veerashaivas claim mythical origins from the Shivalingam, which is similar in thought to the origin theories of Brahmanism.