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Data Nugget: Panchamasali Lingayats
Topic: Historical past and Polity
Why in information?
Earlier this week, numerous protesters of Panchamasali Lingayats, a sub-caste of Karnataka’s dominant Lingayat neighborhood, held an enormous protest in entrance of the Karnataka Legislature advanced in Belagavi, the place the winter session is at present in progress, in reference to their demand for inclusion of Panchamasalis within the 2A OBC class—which supplies 15% reservation—as an alternative of their current 3B class with a 5% quota.
Key Takeaways :
1. The Lingayats are a dominant neighborhood who make up practically 17% of Karnataka’s six crore inhabitants. Formally categorised as Hindu sub-caste ‘Veerashaiva Lingayats’, Lingayats are followers of Basavanna, a twelfth century philosopher-saint.
2. The emergence of the Lingayat sect might be situated throughout the bigger pattern of Bhakti actions that had swept throughout South India from the eighth century AD onwards.
3. At current, the Lingayat neighborhood is an amalgamation of many sub-castes. Of those the agriculturalist Panchamasalis are the biggest, making up practically 70% of the Lingayat inhabitants. They declare to quantity round 85 lakh, or about 14% of Karnataka’s inhabitants of roughly six crore.
4. Some well-known personalities in Karnataka who’re additionally followers of the Lingayat custom embrace former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa and scholar M.M. Kalburgi.
5. The Panchamasali Lingayats have been demanding elevated reservation for twenty years now, it got here to the forefront in 2020. The agitation was referred to as off in July 2021 based mostly on assurances by then CM Yediyurappa on the ground of the Meeting. A 3-member committee was constituted underneath the chairmanship of retired Excessive Court docket decide Subhash Adi to look into the calls for.
6. Nevertheless, Yediyurappa resigned simply days later amidst rising dissent within the state BJP. Among the many factors of rivalry was the Panchamasali demand.
Basavanna
Earth is one and the identical/ For pariah avenue/ And Shiva temple;/ Water is one and the identical/ For laundry shit and ritual cleansing;/ All castes are one/ For a person with self-knowledge/ Salvation’s fruit is one and the identical/ For all six methods;/ Fact is one,/ O grasp Kudalasangama/ For the one who know you.— Basavanna (tr H S Shivaprakash)
1. Basavanna was a social reformer, an activist and a saint from twelfth century, who began a radical anti-caste motion which rejected orthodox ritualistic Hindu practices in favour of a extra private, affective relationship with God, particularly Lord Shiva.
2. He was a minister to Bijjala, a Kalachurya king who succeeded the Chalukyas and dominated from Kalyana. The Sharana motion he presided over attracted folks from all castes, and like most strands of the Bhakti motion, produced a corpus of literature, the vachanas, that unveiled the non secular universe of the Veerashaiva saints.
3. Basavanna’s imaginative and prescient of a societal order was one based mostly on human freedom, equality, rationality, and brotherhood. He and his followers unfold their concepts via vachanas (prose-lyrics) and their prime goal was the caste hierarchy which they rejected with full drive.
4. In one among his vachanas, Basavanna asserts that “the birthless has no caste distinctions, no ritual air pollution.” He rejected the Hindu Brahmanical ritualism and its adherence to sacred texts just like the Vedas.
5. The egalitarianism of Basavanna’s Sharana motion was too radical for its instances. As his fame unfold, folks flocked to Kalyana to see him. He arrange the Anubhava Mandapa, the place the Sharanas, drawn from completely different castes and communities, gathered and engaged in studying and discussions.
6. In up to date instances, followers of Basavanna’s imaginative and prescient is among the most influential teams in Karnataka. They revere each God Shiva and Basavanna.
BEYOND THE NUGGET: Veerashaivism
1. Veerashaivism is a Shaiva sect inside Hinduism and is predominantly situated in Karnataka.
2. Adrija Roychowdhury writes in “The Lingayat sect: Why Hindu and why not Hindu?”- “Veerashaivism emerges within the sixteenth century and the followers declare that the philosophers of the twelfth-thirteenth centuries to be their forebearers. They declare that Basavanna was not the founding father of the Lingayat custom, however moderately a reformer of an already current non secular custom which they name Veerashaivism,” says historian Manu Devadevan.
3. The Veerashaivas settle for the Vedic texts and Hindu practices akin to caste and gender discrimination.
4. The Veerashaivas declare legendary origins from the Shivalingam, which is analogous in thought to the origin theories of Brahmanism.
(Sources: Panchamasali Lingayats, and politics surrounding their quota calls for, What’s the Karnataka quota protest?, The Lingayat sect: Why Hindu and why not Hindu?, Why a twelfth century Bhakti saint is vital for BJP in Karnataka)
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