The Lingayat community, led by its seers, has renewed its call for a separate religion status, raising awareness and seeking government benefits similar to Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs.
Kannada actor Ramesh Aravind talks about what it meant to play a historical character for the first time
The ruling BJP in Karnataka, where Assembly elections are due in April-May next year, considers Lingayats as its key vote-base.
'In today's India very few would, of course, stand Basavanna's test. This led Professor Kalburgi to not only take on casteist and conservative forces in general, but also some powerful conservatives among Lingayats.' 'Conservatives found him polarising and some researchers disagreed with his speculations while admiring his scholarship, but he posited that culture studies and historians have to perforce join the dots, speculate, interpret, interpolate, extrapolate and take leaps to make progress even if some of them later turn out to be wrong.' Shivanand Kanavi salutes Professor M M Kalburgi, the scholar who was assassinated in Dharwad on Sunday, August 30.
