Lingayat mathas: Agents of change or alternative power centres?

The bad press that surrounds the Lingayat matha in Karnataka today obscures from view its critical importance to the social, economic and political life of the state as well as its role in providing spiritual guidance. For every Kannadiga, as the figure of speech has it, a sense of self-respect and worth comes equally from belonging to the ‘matha’ (monastic establishment) as to her ‘mane’ or household.

Mane-matha — this twinned sense of belonging has developed, since the 15th century at least, into a dense network of Lingayat mathas which span the entire Kannada-speaking region, and stretches even beyond.

The painstaking ‘census’ work of Chandrasekhara Naranapura in the early 21st century had shown that there were at least 3,000 plus extant Lingayat mathas, a number that had waxed and waned over time. These mathas are varied in size and membership, and the most prominent among them — the Chitradurga Murugha Matha, the Sirigere Matha (both in Chitradurga district), the Sutturmatha (in Mysore) and the Siddagangamatha (in Tumkur) — were also the early 20th century purveyors of mass education, as much to members of their own flock as to others who missed these opportunities — Dalits, women, Muslims, other lower castes.

Impressive work

But the Lingayat mathaas, an institutional form, which has had a foundational commitment to social service, have for long been the model for all other caste groups to imitate. Among the most significant of these is the Adi Chunchungirimatha in Karnataka, which was consolidated in the late 1920s as the sole representative of the Vokkaligas. It too runs an impressive number of educational institutions and hospitals.

Mathadishas have, moreover, emerged as centres of power in the rural areas, and in some urban areas, since they are also engaged in social welfare activities of an unusual kind: arranging low-cost or free mass marriages (eg. the Chitradurgamatha) or providing free meals to visitors (eg. the dasoha tradition).

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Since 1947, with the rise of representative politics, mathas routinely engage in a wide range of ‘developmental’ activities, ranging from afforestation (eg. Adi Chunchungiri and Sirigeremathas), tank renovation (Sirigerematha), environmental protection (eg. the Siddalinga Swamiji of Sri Thontadarya Math in Gadag, who is among those opposing the dilution of forest usage norms in Kappatagudda reserve), negotiation between the state and the people on their rights in their local areas.

Some of these activities bear great similarity to earlier forms of engagement in rural communities: mathadishas routinely travelled through regions where their supporters lived to settle intra- and inter-caste disputes. This grew, with the expanded reach of the independent Indian nation state itself, to include arbitration on matters that were far more ‘secular’ than those that concerned their forebears. Questions relating to livelihood, wage settlements, land partition, compensation, bounced cheques, for example, are routinely examined and adjudicated on at the Nyaya Peetha at Sirigerematha. Alternative dispute resolution has been something of a forte among the mathadishas.

There may also be those who engage in quite novel realms of the cultural life of the
rural areas. The Sanehallimatha (a branch matha of the Sirigere Bruhan Matha) annually organises an impressive national theatre festival, bringing together performers and performance forms from all over the country, while also organising theatre training among interested youth, and running a repertory.

‘Public intellectuals’

If the matha was earlier also seen as the site of forms of knowledge production — usually but not only focussed on Basava Tattva (or the principles and teachings of Basava) — today the prominent among them function as ‘public intellectuals’, routinely writing for the popular press, exhortatory or reflective works.

In fact, so attractive is the matha-form among assorted castes that the matha has become a necessary vehicle of sub-caste development. One might say that since the 1990s, it has even displaced the caste institution (caste bodies to which members belong by voluntary affiliation) as the more significant vehicle of caste, and specifically sub-caste, progress. The journalist K. Kariswamy had first noticed the phenomenon at the turn of the millennium: it was not just the larger, non-dominant caste groups, such as the Kurubas and the Idigas, that established their own mathas.

Much smaller groups — Medaras, Yadavas, Upparas, Madigas, Valmikis, Bhovis — some of them actively aided by leading Lingayat mathadishas, notably the Murughamatha — have set up institutions of their own. Could this lead to a deepening of caste identities, and perhaps even close off the options of ‘annihilating’ caste altogether? In what ways can the matha-form survive among smaller populations that wield much less economic and socio-cultural power? Does the matha become more of a vehicle for negotiating with the state?

‘Unauthorised’ government

It is clear that the attractions of the matha-form among smaller and smaller fragments of once dominated sub-castes are difficult to understand in a state where the caste association, and indeed assorted cultural and social associations, have had held their own, a robust (and arguably successfully interventionist) presence since the early 20th century. It may well be because, as the literary scholar and historian, M.M. Kalburgi, once described it, the Lingayat matha in particular is an ‘anadhikritasarkara’, an unauthorised government.

Certainly, not a day passes in Karnataka where the officials of the state and its political leaders are not seen together with one or another of the myriad mathadishas who command respect of their local communities. From book launches to irrigation projects, from campaigns for sub-reservations to interventions in school textbooks and midday meal schemes, the mathadisha is a force to contend with, sometimes aligned with the government and sometimes (though more rarely) against it.

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No political party or aspiring leader, in short, can afford to be distanced from, critical of, or hostile to the wide range of mathadishas who function as organic leaders of their communities. This accounts for Karnataka’s political parties pussyfooting around the case against the Murugha Mathadisha. One must note, too, that mathas, and mathadishas, are resolutely male, even if adherents may be of any gender.

To that extent, women belong to, but do not define, mould, or participate in the running of these institutions — as is largely true of other Hindu religious sites and institutions in contemporary India. An unusual, provocative, and therefore fiercely attacked, exception to this masculinist norm was Mate Mahadevi, Jagadguru of the Basava Dharma Peetha at KudalaSangama. Among other things, she spearheaded the movement for the recognition of a separate Lingayat religion. Not surprisingly she has left no sustainable legacy, after a controversial leadership which in turn provoked misogynist attacks from other Swamijis.

The Lingayat mathadisha wields an ‘unauthorised’ power which is not likely to be converted into electoral capital, unlike some of his north Indian counterparts. For now, given the shared power between state institutions and mathas, and given the widespread respect for the moral authority of the mathadisha alongside the legal authority of the state, charismatic (if unaccountable) power has the potential to be both agent of change, and possibly resistance to state power, or a legitimising force for those recreating an older world order.

(The writer is former Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, JNU, New Delhi and  Visiting Professor, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru)