160 Lingayat mutt heads fete Siddaramaiah as Congress seeks to keep Karnataka’s largest community warm
Veerashaiva-Lingayat mutts felicitated Chief Minister Siddaramaiah at Basavakalyan in Bidar district on Thursday giving a dose of confidence to the ruling Congress as the party gears up to face the Lok Sabha polls with a goal to win 18-20 seats out of Karnataka's 28 seats.
The mutt heads honoured the CM for declaring Basavanna, the revered 12th century social reformer and the architect of the Veerashaiva movement, as Karnataka's cultural ambassador. The place Basavakalyan, home to 108-foot statue of Basavanna, is also a culturally and historically important place for Veerashaiva-Lingayats.
Two months ago, the State Cabinet met a major demand from the community to declare their tallest icon as the state's cultural ambassador. The demand came from a group of religious leaders led by Shivarathri Deshikendra Swami, head of the influential JSS Mutt in Mysuru.
The Congress party is treading carefully in its approach to Veerashaiva-Lingayats after having been bitten once badly. The community is the state’s largest as well as politically influential. Even a hint of verbal offence could roil the electoral chances of a party or its leaders. In the 2018 assembly polls, despite a spate of welfare schemes or Bhagyas, the Congress lost, including more than a dozen of its sitting ministers biting the dust.
The electoral setback was attributed to the party's support to a separate Lingayat religion, distinct from that of Hindu, an initiative the community evidently rejected. In the assembly polls in May last year, the same
