LINGAYAT SECT

Subject: Social Issue

Context:Lingayat sub-sect pushes for 15% quota, Karnataka CM faces heat.

Concept:

The VeerashaivaLingayat community who make up 17 per cent of the state population is currently provided five per cent reservation on the whole under the 3B category of backward classes.

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.

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 theAnubhavaMantapa(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.