Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s every visit to poll-bound Karnataka creates a calculated controversy to keep the BJP’s (Bharatiya Janata Party) agendas alive in the media. In his recent visit to Dharwad, Modi declared that Indian democracy had its root in Basavanna’s teachings, and that is why his government considers India not only the biggest democracy but also the mother of democracy.
Showering accolades to Basavanna has been a very calculated and often repeated strategy of the BJP to woo Lingayats, who belong to the sect founded by Basavanna in the 12th century and dominate the region. The Prime Minister had even unveiled a statue of Basavanna in London during his previous stint as PM in 2015. After the emergence of Yeddyurappa as an undisputed leader of the Lingayats, the community has been supporting the BJP for more than two decades now. The electoral success of the BJP in the state is majorly attributed to this phenomenon.
But after the unceremonious toppling of Yeddyurappa from the post of Chief Minister in July 2021 as a part of an aggressive RSS strategy to usher in a pure Hindutva government, and the party, unadulterated by even stale reformist notions of others including Lingayatism, the political dissatisfaction of the community, though not ideological, is brewing.
Since Chief Minister Bommai has proved to be too inefficient to fill the gap, the party is apprehensive about the electoral outcome of this dissatisfaction in the community. On the other hand, the Congress party in the state, in spite of its internal bickering, has been showing a brave face and is believed to be making good of this development. Hence, the BJP is accelerating all efforts to get the community back into its fold, and the Prime Minister’s speech in Dharwad was one such effort.
In this desperate attempt to claim the legacy of Basavanna, the PM went a step ahead and said while he unveiled the statue of Basavanna in London, that others, indirectly referring to Rahul Gandhi, are defaming Indian democracy in London and hence, bringing disrepute to Basavanna. Rahul Gandhi in his recent visit to London and Cambridge had expressed anguish and anxiety about the threat the Indian democracy is facing under the Modi regime.
This strategy of attacking Rahul Gandhi and disarming the opposition's strategy to raise the accountability of the Modi government in the Adani scam has been continued even in the Parliament, where the ruling government itself is obstructing the conduct of business demanding Rahul’s apology for “defaming India”.
This ridiculous equation of criticism of the ruling government and its leader with criticism of the country has been the hallmark of Modi 2.0 and, in fact, is a reflection of the degeneration of the Indian democracy. One can easily find a similarity in DK Barooah's proclamation “India Is Indira and Indira is India”, prior to the emergency. While that was an example of sycophancy being promoted by an autocratic leader of the Congress party, the similar phenomenon under Modi is not just sycophancy, but also a strategic ultranationalist tool and hence, more dangerous.
Rahul Gandhi has even been accused of seeking the help of foreign powers against India since he spoke against the Indian government in a foreign land. But the recorded history of the movement against emergency has ample evidence to prove how the Bhartiya Jana Sangh (the previous avatar of the BJP) and RSS had sent emissaries like Dr Subrahmanyam Swamy to the US and Europe to seek the help of foreign media, civil society, and the governments to topple Indira Gandhi. Narendra Modi himself has accused the previous governments in the foreign land with vengeance. In his speeches in China and South Korea in 2015 Modi had even said that prior to his government, people in India used to consider taking birth in India a curse.
Thus, the BJP ‘s tirade against Rahul Gandhi's speech under the garb of nationalism is deceitful and dangerous. More dishonest is their claim about the legacy of Basavanna.
Basavanna is considered to be a philosophical-religious rebel against the Brahminical Hindu religion, who founded Lingayat Dharma against Brahminical Orthodoxy. Lingayat dharma as propounded by Basavanna is against Sanatana Vedic tenets and is thoroughly inclusive. In fact, the widely believed legend around Basavanna explains how he discarded the holy thread as a mark of rejection of Brahminical orthodoxy. But it is the BJP that has been denying this standing of Lingayat as an independent religion with its own philosophy and theology.
There has been a movement by the Lingayats to consider them as a separate religion and not to be clubbed under and as Hindus. In fact, in 2018, the previous Congress government had even constituted a committee under Justice (Retd) Nagmohan Das to look into the demand. The Committee recommended the recognition of the Lingayat as a separate religion. Accordingly, the Congress government forwarded the proposal to the Union. But it was the Modi government that declined to accord a separate status to the Lingayats. By doing so, the Modi government – BJP and RSS – did a great disservice and insult to Basavanna and the Lingayats.
(The first conference of Jagatika Lingayata Mahasabha (World Lingayat Conference) was recently held in Basava Kalyana, and has reiterated the demand for considering the Lingayat Dharma as a separate religion under Indian Constitution. Ironically, this conference was held on the same premises where the BJP had inaugurated its election Campaign. Unfortunately, the Sabha, though committed to the cause of the independent status of the Lingayat Dharma, the official literature has watered down its anti-orthodoxy stands and even supports the EWS reservation which is considered a Brahminical tool to undo the values of social justice behind the concept of reservation. This ideological corruption of the Lingayat’s social and political elites has been one of the reasons for the growing ideological influence of Brahminical Hindutva and the BJP over the community, and its feeble resistance to the co-option under the Brahminical Hindutva platform.)
Recently, the Text Book Correction Committee appointed by the BJP government, headed by ardent Hindutva campaigner Rohit Chakrateertha, deleted all the references made to Basavanna as a rebel philosophical-religious leader, denouncing the holy thread and founding an independent religion. Instead, Basavanna was presented as a social reformer from within the Hindu religion. His negation of the sacred thread and enunciation of a theology that considers all men and women as born equal has been deleted by the BJP Committee.
Another BJP leader, CT Ravi, who is the party’s National Secretary in charge of the southern states, has gone on record saying that it was wrong to consider Basavanna and the Lingayats as outsiders to the Hindu religion. He said that Basavanna only preached the humanistic ethos embedded within Vedic thoughts through his new sect. Therefore, Basavanna is a social reformer belonging to the Hindu pantheon.
Thus, it was again the BJP and RSS which insulted Basavanna and his democratic and egalitarian values.
In fact, legend also says that it was the Sanatana backlash against the inter-caste marriage between a Dalit boy and brahmin girl mediated by Basavanna that resulted in the massacre of the followers of Basavanna, while he himself committed death by suicide in Kudala Sangma. The irony is that the Modi government, which boasts of Basavanna’s legacy, is implementing stringent marriage laws making inter-religious marriages impossible.
While the Lingayat Dharma thrived because of the conversion of Hindus, and arguably the conversion to Lingayat religion has been the biggest conversion that has taken place in the history of the state, the BJP government in the state and elsewhere is bringing stringent anti-conversion laws, thereby insulting the religious freedom that Basavanna argued for.
Hence, it is the absolute hypocrisy of Modi to say that he and his Parivar are the true disciples of Basavanna.
In fact, one of the famous Vachanas of Basavanna goes like this :
Do not steal, do not kill
Do not lie, do not rage
Do not loathe the other
Do not boast about yourself
Do not revile the opponent
this is the inner purity and the external
this is the path to realise the divine
While Basavanna said ‘Do not steal’, the Modi government has been indulging in the daylight robbery of public resources, leave alone stealing. While Basavanna said ‘Do not kill’, the whole of the BJP- RSS political strategy is violent and genocidal, resulting in mass murders of non-Hindus like Muslims, Christians, and Dalits as we have seen in Gujarat, Muzaffar Nagar, and Delhi.
While Basavanna said ‘Do not lie’, the entire political and ideological edifice of the RSS-BJP thrives on lies, be it their role in the freedom movement, or Indian-ness and the Hindu religion, the Gobblesian campaign about the performance of the Modi government, or the threat to the country.
While Basavanna said ‘Do not boast about yourself’, the narcissism of Modi reaches new heights day by day, where some of his elite followers believe that India got independence only after Modi came to power!
Despite this, they are able to claim the heritage of Basavanna only by funding huge statues of Basavanna, who had also said: That which does not accumulate and is mobile, survive, and that which is institutionalised, perish.
Thus, the emergence of Modi is the corollary to the demise of the Basava philosophy. And the opposite is also true.
The author is an activist and freelance journalist. Views expressed are the author’s own.