BASAVESHWARA

BASAVESHWARA

Subject: Culture

Context: Karnataka Chief Minister laid the foundation stone for the ‘New Anubhava Mantapa’ in Basavakalyan, the place where 12th century poet-philosopher Basaveshwara lived for most of his life.

Concept:

• The New Anubhava Mantapa, as envisaged now, will be a six-floor structure in the midst of the 7.5 acre plot and represent various principles of Basaveshwara’sphilosophy.
• It will showcase the 12th Century Anubhava Mantapa (often referred to as the “first Parliament of the world”) established by him in Basavakalyan, where philosophers and social reformers held debates.
• The building will adopt the KalyanaChalukya style of architecture.

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 Anubhava Mantapa (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 “Veerashaiva Lingayats” and they are considered to be Shaivites.

Sharana movement:

• The Sharana movement , 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’s Sharana 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.