Basavanna Jayanti

Subject: History

Section: Arts and culture

Concept:

About Basaveshwara

Basavanna was a 12th-century philosopher, statesman, Kannada poet and a social reformer during the reign of the Kalachuri-dynasty king Bijjala I in Karnataka, India.
Basavanna spread social awareness through his poetry, popularly known as Vachanaas. Basavanna rejected gender or social discrimination, superstitions and rituals.
He introduced new public institutions such as the AnubhavaMantapa (or, the “hall of spiritual experience”), which welcomed men and women from all socio-economic backgrounds to discuss spiritual and mundane questions of life, in open.
As a leader, he developed and inspired a new devotional movement named Virashaivas, or “ardent, heroic worshippers of Shiva”.
This movement shared its roots in the Tamil Bhakti movement, particularly the Shaiva Nayanars traditions, over the 7th- to 11th-century.

Lingayats

The term Lingayat denotes a person who wears a personal linga, an iconic form of god Shiva, on the body which is received during the initiation ceremony.
Lingayats are the followers of the 12th-century social reformer-philosopher poet, Basaveshwara.
The Lingayats are strict monotheists. They enjoin the worship of only one God, namely, Linga (Shiva).
The word ‘Linga’ does not mean Linga established in temples, but universal consciousness qualified by the universal energy (Shakti).
Lingayats had been classified as a Hindu subcaste called “VeerashaivaLingayats” and they are considered to be Shaivites.

Sharana movement:

The Sharanamovement, Basaveshwara 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.
The egalitarianism of Basavanna’sSharana movement was too radical for its times.
He set up the Anubhava Mandapa, where the Sharanas, drawn from different castes and communities, gathered and engaged in learning and discussions.
Sharanas challenged the final bastion of the caste order: they organised a wedding where the bridegroom was from a lower caste, and the bride a Brahmin.