Know Basavanna, who stood for equality and women empowerment

Dr M S Ashadevi

What is Basava Jayanti?
Basava Jayanti for me is the celebration of democracy. We all believe that Basava led the social movement, but he was not a power hungry person. He was an open minded person and was open to ideas. He always believed in humanity as a religion, leaving aside the caste, class and creed. He worked for the empowerment of women. All his beliefs and ideologies are a celebration of Basava Jayanti.

Who is Basava?
Basavanna is a dream of common people from many centuries. He is not a mere person, he is a representative of many people and ideologies. He taught everyone to respect the labourers irrespective of their job. Basavanna inducted the ideologies by respecting the job and personality. He worked hard to create an equal platform in a society where discrimination ruled the roost. He tried to break the norms in the society.

What is the importance of Basava Jayanti?
By calling it Basava Jayanti we are merging it with hundreds of other jayantis. I feel that it would be better to call it as a ‘Day of Democracy’ or ‘Day of Humanity’ or some other name which denotes Basavanna. It is important to honour the ideologies and principles of Basavanna.

How relevant is Basavanna today?
I feel that Basavanna is much more relevant today than the time he lived. He is like a life-saver in an emergency. The whole world is in an emergency today. We need Basavanna, his principles, and his ideologies to save us from the chaos that we are experiencing today. I would like to say that Gandhiji is a continuation of Basavanna or in other words we can say that Basavanna was the first avatar of Gandhiji.

What is Basavanna’s message to society? His life is his message to society. He shattered the ego of the upper caste, empowered women and advocated equality and harmony. Instead of just imitating these ideologies for one day, we should learn to practice the Basava philosophy in our everyday life.

(Dr M S Ashadevi is a professor at the Maharani’s Cluster University in Bengaluru. She is a poet, writer and keen follower of Basavanna’s Sharana Sahitya. As told to Manjunath Hadimani)