Banjegere's controversial book
Banjegere Jayaprakash's essay (now brought out as a book, published earlier in the Agni magazine) 'aanudEva horagaNavanu', an inquiry into Basavanna's jaati caused great controversy and debate in Karnataka, India. The author claims that Basavanna, (the 12th century figure mostly anachronistically understood as a social reformer) was in fact a maadiga and not a brahmin, as textbook history and commonly held, 'established truth' has had it for sometime now. Really, it is a claim, for there is no justification or basis provided in the book to prove that Basavanna is a maadiga. In fact, there is no basis in any of the archives to prove that Basava was a maadiga. But Banjegere would not know this, since his work is not historical at all. Throughout the book, however, he insists that different theoretical presuppositions will yield different shasanas ('facts'). As if, the shasanas exist to tell us the stories we would like to hear! As if history is out there ...