The Brahmin Who Founded Lingayat

To fight every degeneration, a leader is required who dares to step up and raise that first complaint which makes people think and eventually act. Centuries ago, Basava, an orthodox Brahmin became one such leader, a figure of hope and change for the improvised women and outcastes of Karnataka, and this is this is his tale.

The Lingayats believe in the greatness of Shiva, Source: Pinterest

This tale evokes defiance. This tale evokes rebellion. This tale has the charm to slander the way of the world as it presents the story of a man who preached all his life, the philosophy to break free, from traditions and cultures which do nothing but spread hate and marginalize the doubly oppressed community. This is the tale of a man whose defiance against culturally accepted practices started a new tradition and community altogether, the Lingayat community of South India.

Basava was born around 1105 in the south Indian district of Bagewadi in Karnataka. He was a Brahmin, belonging to a family of orthodox and practicing upper caste people who religiously used to follow the caste system. Hence, since childhood, Basava observed the humiliation and near-death treatment that lower caste people were subjected to, owning to their identity, which was conventionally imposed by a human-made doctrine.

While the sacred brahmin threads were being tied to Basava’s sixteen-year-old wrists, he was already disgusted at the inhumanity of his community, and soon a day came, when he turned 28, a mature and strong man of both will and body, that Basava tore those same threads and waged a verbal war of reason against the brahmins, calling his kin ‘a pack of venerable donkeys’.

It was around 1132 and young Basava was holding the position of a respected diplomat in the court of the king of Bagewadi. But his radical ideas were soon to change the safe heaven of a life he had created. Although Basava abhorred everything associated with caste oppression and, ritual worship of gods, there was one God whom even Basava worshipped, owning him to being considered an outsider in the communities of gods, Shiva.

Statue of Basava, Source: Google Images

As Manu S. Pillai writes in his research paper on Basava, “Shiva was as special for Basava as Krishna was for Mirabai”. So that’s how Basava’s Lingayat revolution started at an infant level. He started preaching about every caste exploitation and soon the context of gender oppression also got whisked into it. It is said that Basava had around 210 saints and followers and 35 of them were women, most of them unmarried who were deemed outcast by their respected community.

As women were given the status equal to the lower castes, their condition was no better than the lower caste communities and hence, Basava’s teachings became a huge source of inspiration for women. It is said that so intoxicating were Basava’s words that even the queen of Bagewadi became his disciple and joined the Lingayats. By now everything was going neutrally, there was unrest but not on a broad level. Things started turning rough for Basava when he organized the first intercaste marriage between a Brahmin girl and a cow herder boy. Basava lost his job at the court and went into voluntary exile.

For two centuries after Basava’s death, the followers of the Lingayat community tried to keep the revolution alive but it soon died down. It was only a few centuries later that one of the Lingayats joined the administration, and the revolution was revived.

Today the Lingayat community is no longer a startup tradition but has its precious history of being anti-caste and feminist ideologies. It's all a result of Basava’s teachings and strength that found this reality to take shape, to fight against oppression and ensure a vision of equality. This story commemorates Basava and his golden vision of unity and equality for all.