Over the past week, senior leaders from the BJP and RSS have called for the term “secular” to be removed from the Preamble. Secularism, by various definitions, has had a long and difficult history in the Indian subcontinent. Muslim rulers from the Delhi Sultanate onwards, c. 13th century CE, are widely considered to have been intolerant of other religions. Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain rulers from earlier centuries are often portrayed as encouraging debates but preventing religious violence. Neither of these views are based on clear-eyed readings of the evidence.
The fact is that, across time, Indian rulers had a hard-headed approach to religion. When tolerance was profitable, it was encouraged. In times of religious conflict, however, kings had no obligation to be secular or to protect minorities.
To understand this, let’s look specifically at the confrontation between Jainism—once the Deccan’s premier religion—with a 12th-century Shaivite movement, over 200 years before the Delhi Sultanate arrived in the region.
Religious diversity in Karnataka
While Jainism today is most popular in western India, in the early medieval period (600–1100 CE), it was one of the dominant religions of present-day Karnataka. In its heyday, it was lavished with royal patronage; kings in north and south Karnataka received initiation from Jain gurus and claimed the favour of Jain goddesses. Jain monasteries were patronised by village headmen, landlords, and merchants. Right up to the early 12th century, it was perfectly possible for many religions to coexist in Karnataka.
Not only did members of the same family receive initiation from different sects, but royals often took care to patronise all religions. Boundaries between all religions were blurry; there were Jain Mahabharatas, and Shaivite rulers praised Jain temples in their inscriptions. As historian Leslie C Orr shows in ‘Identity and Divinity: Boundary-Crossing Goddesses in medieval South India’, laypeople often worshipped both Hindu and Jain deities without belonging solely to either sect.
However, by the late 12th century, major social, political, and economic transformations were afoot. In his paper, ‘The Origins of the Vīraśaiva Movement’, historian RN Nandi argues that elite temple-based religion grew increasingly disconnected from working-class people. This is supported by archaeologists Peter Johansen and Andrew M Bauer in their book, Reconceptualising the Archaeology of Southern India. Analysing the changing patterns of land use and donation in the Raichur region, they suggest that extensive gifts of land to religious institutions “generated social discontent among a range of inhabitants of the Deccan.”
As often happens in times of inequality and social stress, this quickly led to a wave of discontent expressed through religion. Chasing patronage, religious leaders drew clear boundaries around their communities and attacked the “other”. Sometimes attacks were rhetorical. Often, they were not.
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Jainism under attack
Around this time, a set of revolutionary voices, singing in common Kannada, erupts into the historical record: the voices of Shiva’s Heroes, the Virashaivas. Shiva’s Heroes challenged everything. The caste system; the centrality of scripture and expensive temple rituals; even, in some cases, marriage itself.
Virashaivas did not shy away from criticising Brahminical institutions. However, wealthy Jain establishments were more frequently a target. I should be very clear that the resulting confrontation says little about how either Hinduism or Jainism as they have evolved today. Instead, the events of the 12th century can show us the dynamics of a majority versus a minority when a state chooses a side—or doesn’t get involved.
In the edited volume Jaina Culture in Medieval Karnataka: Dominance, Dependency and Endurance, historians Julia AB Hegewald, Pius F Pinto, and Tiziana Lorenzetti examine what happened to medieval Jains. Merchants such as the Settis and Banajigas (Baniyas), formerly Jain, received Virashaiva initiation. This was a canny move, as they could sense the winds changing.
Minor chiefs and royal houses quickly followed. Soon, Virashaiva leaders were challenging Jain monks to debate; the historical record shows that, after defeating them with arguments or miracles, they sometimes attacked Jain communities and either destroyed or converted their temples.
That, at least, is the picture painted by Virashaiva records. An inscription at Ablur, dating to the 1180s, relates the story of Ekantada Ramayya, a Virashaiva leader who supposedly beheaded himself during a debate with Jains. After seven days, Shiva restored his head, and he led an attack on the local Jain temple. Other Deccan political leaders found it profitable to simply attack Jain communities outright. PB Desai, a historian of Jainism, shows through inscriptions that Deccan lords Goggarasa and Viruparasa (literally “king Gogga” and “king Virupa”) claimed titles such as “the hunter of the wild beasts which are the Jainas, a fire to the Jaina scriptures, an axe to the followers of Jina”, claiming to have “encountered” the “advocates of alien doctrines” at a host of towns and to have “made the world quake, pounded and powdered the Jaina temples, and raised the thrones of Śivalingas… displaying aloft on the open altar the paramountcy of god Śiva.”
There is substantial evidence of Virashaiva attacks on Jain temples. In the Siddheshvara temple at Haveri, for example, it is still possible to see that the Jain sculptures on the spine of the superstructure have been erased, while a lingam was set up in the interior. Jain historian Shantinath Dibbad, in the edited volume The Jaina Heritage: Distinction, Decline and Resilience, estimates, based on Virashaiva textual claims, that between 1,800–2,000 Jain temples were destroyed or reconverted in the 12th and 13th centuries.
While such medieval claims were intended to be over the top, there is a palpable sense of fear in Jain texts, such as the Samaya Parikshe of Brahmashiva—a resident of present-day Patancheru near Hyderabad. In many ways, Brahmashiva’s views eerily echo those of minority leaders today. In her paper ‘Polemic, Diatribe and Farce’, historian Shubha Shanthamurthy writes that Brahmashiva complained about forcible conversion and persecution. He demanded that Jains must strictly protect their faith, support only each other, and prevent Jain women from marrying outside their community.
Brahmashiva had good reason to be worried. On the Virashaiva side, the Basava Purana relates the story of Dedara Dasayya, the guru of Patancheru’s local queen, Suggaladevi. Dasayya, according to the Purana, defeated the Jains in debate with a miraculous crystal lingam. He then “established the crystal linga in the town… then destroyed the seven hundred Jain vasadis (temples)”.
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Limited state protection
What did the Deccan states and their rulers do about the persecution of Jains? Not much, unfortunately. As historians note in The Jaina Heritage, the middle aristocracy, both merchants and landlords, supported Virashaivas—whether for religious or economic reasons, it’s difficult to say. Lower castes, who made up the economic backbone of the state, received Virashaiva initiation en masse. All these groups made up the infrastructure of the state on the ground, and there were no independent judicial institutions to enforce order. Amid all the upheavals, Delhi Sultanate forces made rapid advances into the Deccan, completely overturning the political and religious situation.
It was only in the late 14th century, as the Vijayanagara empire consolidated power, that courtly elites tried to systematically enforce tolerance of all communities—possibly to prevent local conflicts and maintain order. The Vijayanagara state authority was much more extensive than those of earlier kingdoms, exercised through a network of Vedic, Advaita, and Vaishnavite mathas across a huge swathe of South India.
In 1368, the Vijayanagara king Bukka travelled all the way to Sravanabelagola in South Karnataka since “the blessed Jainas” complained about an “injustice” done by Srivaishnava bhaktas. The king requested Srivaishnava authorities from as far away as Tirumala and Srirangam to take these Jains under their protection, declaring that they were entitled to various honours and requesting that the Srivaishnavas consider the Jains’ fortunes or misfortunes their own. The Srivaishnavas were to set up a declaration to this effect in all Jain temples across the kingdom.
Whether this actually worked is debatable. This inscription is an exception in the echoing silence of Deccan Jain inscriptions from the 14th century onwards, where once there had been hundreds of donations. Srivaishnava mega-temple complexes were thriving, and mathas had plenty to keep them busy. I’ve been unable to find Srivaishnava-sponsored declarations of friendship with Jains, though more may come to light in future.
The fact is that by the 14th century, Jain communities had lost so much power that few new establishments were set up (except in coastal Karnataka). It was impossible to reclaim old temples in North Karnataka, as many had been absorbed into new Virashaiva monasteries. But what is interesting is that Vijayanagara did have a concept of state-enforced religious tolerance, even if the institutional backing was the royal court and its allied mathas.
But was this sufficient to protect the rights and dignities of Jains, now a minority? When everyone did their jobs as intended, possibly. But in practice, so much depended on local politics, on the ruler’s limitations, on the priorities of matha heads. In Vijayanagara-ruled Andhra, as late as the 16th century, inscriptions show that lords claimed titles such as Śvētāmbara-tala-guṇḍu-gaṇḍa, ‘a menace to the heads of the Shvetambara Jains.’
What does this say for secularism in India in the 21st century? Of course, the fate of Deccan Jains is not that of all minorities. Nor do a few Deccan kingdoms establish a pattern of state behaviour that applies everywhere in the subcontinent. The crucial point, though, is that the Republic of India’s understanding of religious policy should not be based only on this or that North Indian Sultan, but on a sober understanding of the dynamics of majority and minority communities throughout time.
Any religion’s ideas of righteous violence can rapidly transform, depending on sociopolitical opportunities. Society will not simply self-correct: history shows us that it will choose the path of least resistance. Only laws, institutions and state capacity will enable India’s religious diversity to stand the test of time.
Anirudh Kanisetti is a public historian. He is the author of ‘Lords of Earth and Sea: A History of the Chola Empire’ and the award-winning ‘Lords of the Deccan’. He hosts the Echoes of India and Yuddha podcasts. He tweets @AKanisetti and is on Instagram @anirbuddha.
This article is a part of the ‘Thinking Medieval‘ series that takes a deep dive into India’s medieval culture, politics, and history.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)
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