In India, there are many panths and sampradaya. Most of them are very different from each other and they at many times do not hold anything in common. For example, there are so many saints in India and they have distinctive messages to their followers. Then there are traditions centered around certain practices and it is difficult to find out even the common thread among them to qualify them as belonging to one religion.

However, the convenient category for all this disparate sect imposed on them by the Brahmins is that they are the part of “Hinduism”. Hindu is a geographical term that is forged as a religion and forced upon the disparate groups to unite them politically so that the upper castes can benefit from the “religious” sentiments so that those sentimental classes can be subjugated.

Lingayats from Karnataka have moved away from the Hinduism and the cabinet of the Karnataka government has already given them a positive node. It was the decision arrived at by the large-scale intellectual churning that took place among the Lingayats and some of their intellectual leaders like Gauri Lankesh were killed by the Hindutva fundamentalists. Long before this mobilization saw the light of the day, the Marathas in Maharashtra formed a separate religion away from Hinduism and they termed it as “Shivdharma”: the religion based on Shivaji.

They Have Nothing in Common with Hinduism

The Ayya sect popular among the OBC Nadars are now demanding that they are not Hindus and they would like to have a separate status as a religion. Their head of the temple has already iterated demand to have a different status other than Hinduism.

Followers of Ayya sect have nothing in common with Hinduism/Brahminism as Lingayats’ religion has nothing in common with Hinduism/Brahminism. They don’t observe rituals in a way Hindus do, neither do they have similar worship methods. They follow totally different marriage and death rituals and don’t break coconuts in the temples of religious ceremonies as Brahminical religion does. It’s a high time that nation recognize Ayya sect separate from Hinduism.

It is difficult to define religion and many times it is just a subjective definition that suits a particular slot of people wanting to power. Hinduism is the best suited categorical definition to define the religions in India, but the first riddle of Hinduism is: Who is a Hindu? This riddle is unanswerable from many counts. It is difficult to define a Hindu, but it is easy to define people belonging to different sects and they are not the sects of or in Hinduism.

Perhaps, it is time to go back to the temples of Ayya sect and look at the mirror that is placed at the altar instead of figures of gods and goddesses and just like we will see ourselves reflected in the mirror in the temple, we will realise that we are the god onto ourselves or the god is the creation of our mind. This will be liberating for many human beings who are asked to search gods in the stones and animals.

India needs a mirror to hold onto herself to realize what India really is. It is not punya bhoomi or pitrubhoomi of the Brahmin nationalists, it is the Republic of people, by them, and for them!

Author – Mangesh Dahiwale, edited by Velivada team