Veerashaiva Mahasabha meet today to discuss religion tag

Minister for Municipal Administration Eshwar Khandre on Tuesday said the decision of Akhila Bharata Veerashaiva Mahasabha on the controversy surrounding independent religion status to Veerashaiva-Lingayat dharma will be final.

The Mahasabha, which acts as an umbrella organisation of the community, is scheduled to hold its executive committee meeting on Wednesday in Bengaluru to discuss the issue. The executive committee is likely to pass a resolution in this regard. Senior Congress leader Shamanur Shivashankarappa is the Mahasabha president, while Khandre is its secretary-general.  “We will discuss the issue and try to clear all confusion. It is not proper to stage protests accusing each other. Veerashaiva-Lingayat dharma has a long history and it has strived to take everybody along from the beginning. And, Mahasabha wants to continue this tradition,” Khandre said. He, however, refused to divulge his stand on the issue.

Not only religious leaders but also senior leaders of the community in the ruling Congress are divided on the demand for separate religion status. While a section of leaders, including Shivashankarappa, is of the view that the religion tag should be given to Veerashaiva-Lingayat, others, including Water Resources Minister M B Patil, are arguing that the Lingayat dharma is different from the Veerashaiva dharma and that the religion status should be given only to the Lingayat dharma.

No tour by ministers

On the state government’s move to send a group of five ministers belonging to the community to drum up support for the religion status, Khandre said there is no such plan. “As of now there is no such plan. I will talk to Basavaraj Rayareddy (Higher Education Minister) in this regard,” he stated. Two of the five ministers – Medical Education Minister Dr Sharanprakash Patil and Horticulture Minister S S Mallikarjun – selected for the tour have already backed out. Rayareddy and Minister for Mines and Geology Vinay Kulkarni are the two other ministers in the group.

Meanwhile, state Congress president G Parameshwara said that demand for religion status to Veerashaiva-Lingayat dharma is a sensitive issue and it will be discussed at the next KPCC executive committee meeting. The issue has not been discussed in any of the party fora so far, he added.