A community’s religious quest

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Karnataka Chief Minister H Siddaramaiah, seeking a successive second term for his Congress party in the elections due in a couple of months, has thrown a spanner in the works of its main challenger, the Bharatiya Janata Party, by recommending to the Centre to grant the Lingayat community recognition as a separate religious group with minority status.

The Lingayats, with an estimated population of 61 million, can influence the outcome of the election in about 100 of the state’s 224 assembly constituencies. 

If the Congress loses in Karnataka, Punjab will be the only large state under it. As for BJP, it is the only southern state where it has a chance of coming to power. It has named BS Yeddyurappa as its chief ministerial candidate, overlooking the corruption charges he had attracted when he headed the government last time, because he is a Lingayat.  

The Centre has not taken a decision on the Karnataka government’s recommendation, but sources reportedly said after an informal Cabinet meeting that it would not be accepted as it would deprive Dalit members of the community of the benefit of reservation in government jobs and educational institutions that they now enjoy.

The BJP-led Central government is likely to reject the Karnataka recommendation on the ground that Dalits among the Lingayats will lose the benefit of reservation if it is accepted. 

The reasoning is specious. Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism are treated as breakaway groups of Hinduism and Dalits who profess these religions get the benefit of reservation. The same consideration can be shown to Dalits among the Lingayats.

The issue of Lingayat religion is not a long simmering one. The Lingayats are followers of 12th century reformer Basaveswara, a Brahmin who repudiated the Vedas and worked for social equality.  Originally they were known as Veerashaivas (meaning Heroic Shaivites). In the 18th century the term Lingayat came into vogue from their practice of wearing the linga, symbolising Shiva. Over the years the two terms came to represent two different groups among Basava’s followers with noticeable differences. 

While both groups are devotees of Shiva their concepts of Shiva differ. Like most Hindus, Veerashaivites envision Shiva as a god in human form with a snake wrapped round the neck. To Lingayats, Shiva is a formless entity that resides in every life form. 

Veerashaivites have temples and priestly orders. Lingayats do not believe in temple worship. 

One reason for the lack of cohesion in the community was the loss of most of its sacred texts, known as vachanas. In the last century, a Basaveswara follower named Phakirappaa Gurubasappa Halakatti collected and published 22,000 vachanas found on palm leaf manuscripts. 

Scholars like MM Kalburgi who studied them pointed out that Basava’s teachings differed vastly from the principles of Hinduism. Gauri Lankesh, an activist- journalist, propagated this idea through her writings. Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh were killed, apparently by a group annoyed by their work on the subject.  

The question whether Lingayats are Hindus or members of a separate religious community has been under discussion for over a century. In 1904, the All India Veerashaiva Mahasabha, established by one of the mutts, declared that Lingayats and Veerashaivas are one, and that they are Hindus. But Lingayats maintained they are not Hindus. In 1940 the Mahasabha changed its stand and sought recognition as a separate religion called Veerashaiva. 

 In the Constituent Assembly, Lingayat members including S Nijalingappa, who later became Chief Minister of Karnataka, pleaded unsuccessfully for the recognition of Lingayats as a separate religion. The demand was raised before the last Congress-led government at the Centre in 2013.

To enable the Lingayats and Veerashaivites to stay together in the proposed Lingayat religion, the Karnataka government has suggested that the latter be recognised as a group within it.

 TheVeerashaiva Mahasabha, of which a Congress MLA, Shamanur Shivashakarappa, is now the President, has come up with a confused response. It has asked the state government to withdraw its recommendation to the Centre as it divides the community. It has also said it would press the Centre to provide religious minority status to Veerashaiva-Lingayats. 

Minority status will enable the community to establish its own educational institutions.  

Siddharamaiah has succeeded in dividing the Linguayat-Veerashaiva community. That probably serves his immediate political purpose. 

But this is not an issue to be decided by the Centre and the State. They must leave it to the members of the community to decide their religious affiliation. Their own roles must be limited to assessing the ground situation in a non-partisan manner and taking such steps as are necessary to ensure that the will of the community prevails. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 27, 2018.

Congress needs to understand people's yearning for change

By B.R.P.Bhaskar

Special to IANS

The dismal performance of the Congress in the four Hindi-speaking states which went to the polls recently did not surprise anyone, except perhaps its own leaders. Pollsters have been saying for more than a year that it is on the decline. They have said the popular mood is such that the Bharatiya Janata Party will push it down to the second place and emerge as the largest party in the Lok Sabha in next year's elections.

Congress leaders have offered the self-serving explanation that the party lost because it failed to apprise the people of the good work done by its governments at the Centre and in the states. They should ask themselves if the good things that happened under their watch are sufficient to persuade the people to overlook the bad things such as rampant corruption and spiralling prices.

People form judgments continually on the basis of how governments' actions impinge on their lives.

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government is mired in scams, and its popularity has touched the nadir. Some leaders of the Congress and its allies are fighting graft charges in courts. When acts of malfeasance came to light, the UPA, instead of squarely facing the situation, reflexively went into denial mode and resorted to cover-up.

Corruption has grown enormously in recent years. What's more, it is now an issue high up in people's minds, thanks to Anna Hazare's on-again, off-again Jan Lokpal campaign.

Corruption, as Indira Gandhi famously observed, is a global phenomenon. A historical analysis will bear out that most countries faced corruption when their economy was growing rapidly. The British parliament had hauled up Clive and Warren Hastings on their return home from India with loot. Japan, South Korea and China, which witnessed economic boom ahead of India, also witnessed high corruption. While they sent functionaries like president, prime minister and party bosses to jail, India has had a poor record in dealing with corruption at the top.

Other parties too are affected by corruption. The BJP was forced to act against its chief minister in Karnataka, B.S.Yeddyurappa, following serious allegations, and he broke away and formed a regional party. Now it is trying to get him back to its side before the parliamentary elections. There were corruption charges against a dozen members of the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh but that did not prevent the party from securing a third term in the Assembly elections.

Clearly, the Congress has an image problem it cannot wish away. Corruption charges stick more easily to it than to others since it has been in power longest and is assumed to have been corrupted to a greater extent than the rest.

It is unfair to throw the blame for the party's present plight entirely on Manmohan Singh, as some Congressmen are doing. After all, he had also presided over UPA I, which did well enough to secure a new mandate for the party.

Some of the Congress's problems do not admit of easy solutions. It is saddled with leaders with a record of mishandling issues of import. Telangana is a classic example of a problem complicated by leaders whom the high command had relied upon to sort out difficulties. Such problems are the price the party has to pay for attaching greater value to servitude than to competence.

The party's shrinking vote base presumably still includes many who view it as the party of Gandhi or Nehru or Indira Gandhi, all of whom had forged emotional links with the ordinary people. Having relied upon nominated leaders after the 1969 split, at the state level it lacks leaders and an apparatus capable of ensuring delivery of its votes. This leaves it in a disadvantageous situation, especially in states where it is pitted against cadre parties.

Where the party apparatus is intact, as in Kerala, it faces difficulty of another kind. The supposedly all-powerful high command has to remain a helpless spectator when a leadership which stands discredited, following disclosures about closeness to cheats and communal elements, drags the party down with it.

There are, of course, issues that can be addressed, not to find quick-fix solutions but to refurbish the party's image before the elections. It may be able to regain some lost ground if it can convey the message that it understands the people's yearning for change, reflected in the Assembly elections, and is willing to reinvent itself.

A new Lok Sabha has to be in position before the term of the present one ends in May 2014. Last time, the deadline was June 2 and the long-drawn-out electoral process began with the Election Commission announcing the poll schedule March 2. This time the announcement may have to be advanced to mid-February.

The moment the schedule is announced, the model code comes into force, and the government will not be able to initiate any new programmes or policies. That means the Congress has just two months for any makeover effort. But the party stands paralyzed, caught between a prime minister who has outlived his utility and a fancied successor who is finding it difficult to get rid of the reluctant groom syndrome.