Frontline On Air | How Karnataka’s maths mirror the interaction of energy, piety, and politics

LISTEN: On the face of it, the maths are established to entrench a caste’s non secular practices and supply a locus for worship, however students have additionally identified that they’ve change into areas to astutely additional the neighborhood’s pursuits.

Over the previous few many years, varied communities throughout the nation have been striving to achieve Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe standing buoyed by the concomitant advantages that such a tag would safe for these caste and tribal teams. Whereas such negotiations are a part of India’s social realpolitik and symbolise the success of its deep democracy, one might draw a hyperlink between the institution of a gurupeetha or math to the neighborhood’s demand for ST standing. Different communities in Karnataka too have used the establishment of the maths to additional their political agendas.

This linkage will probably be acquainted to individuals who have carefully adopted the distinctive growth of varied caste maths, or mathas, in Karnataka, even by teams that didn’t have such a convention or tradition. On the face of it, the maths are established to entrench a caste’s non secular practices and supply a locus for worship, however students have additionally identified that they’ve change into areas to astutely additional the neighborhood’s pursuits. Thus, the maths and the guru who heads it are sometimes enmeshed within the pursuit of energy and in negotiating on behalf of the neighborhood with the State.

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