India, April 30 -- By Ravi Joshi, Former Joint Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat

As the State celebrates 'Basava Jayanti' today, it is indeed apt to recall one of the most revolutionary ideas of Basavanna - the 'Anubhava Mantapa' and its significance to the modern world. In the mid-12th century when Basavanna led the revolt against Brahminical Orthodoxy, he did it so on several fronts.

First was the rejection of ritual practices of Vaidika Brahmins, the family in which he was born by refusing to wear the 'Janivaara,' a sacred thread worn by a Brahmin boy after his Upanayanam ceremony. It is a tragic irony of our times that people in Karnataka are still fighting over this symbol of high-caste birth, today, more than 800 years after Basavann...