From “doing religion” to “doing memory”?: The South Indian Vīraśaiva saint Maṇṭēsvāmi becoming an icon of regional Dalit culture and identity

Abstract

The proposed paper is part of a larger research project that studies the changes and cultural importance of the Maṇṭēsvāmi oral-performative tradition in contemporary Karnataka, South India. The tradition has evolved around the worship of the young Vīraśaiva saint Maṇṭēsvāmi, whose physical and spiritual journey is related in an oral epic. Maṇṭēsvāmi sought to implement and revive the ideals formulated by Basava, the founder of the 12th century Vīraśaiva reform movement, thus advocating equality, unity and utmost devotion to God Śiva. He is regarded both as a mythic and historic figure, as the oral and ritual traditions surrounding him, as well as archival materials suggest. However, he is not only remembered, commemorated and venerated as a saint, but also as a hero of Dalit cultural identity. Using a variety of sources, including texts from the oral tradition, social media posts and academic texts, I look at the way the figure of Maṇṭēsvāmi is imagined and remembered, appropriated and repurposed by different groups. Guided by the idea of “doing memory” (Heß, Strenga 2024), this paper seeks to outline and understand the trajectory of Maṇṭēsvāmi from a subject of worship to an icon of Dalit identity in Southern Karnataka. The analysis will focus on the agentive dimension of what Novetzke (2011) calls “public memory,” paying attention to the parties involved in the creation of Maṇṭēsvāmi as a “memory figure,” delving into the motivation and objective of “the publics.”