M.M.Kalburgi (28 November 1938 – 30 August 2015) was an Indian scholar of Vachana sahitya (Vachana literature) and academic who served as the vice-chancellor of Kannada University in Hampi. A noted epigraphist of Kannada, he was awarded the National Sahitya Akademi award in 2006 for Marga 4, a collection of his research articles.
The former vice-chancellor of Hampi University, Kalburgi is credited with having authored over 100 books and 400 articles.
He has also been the recipient of numerous national and state-level awards for his works, as DNA reports, including the Karnataka Sahitya Academy Award, Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award, Janapada Award, and Basava Puraskara.
Controversy around Kalburgi and why some one may have killed him:
A regular target of his writing was the Lingayat community, which is the single largest group in Karnataka of which Dr Kalburgi himself was a member. He received threats to his life in 1989 after Marga One, a compendium of his research articles on Kannada folklore, religion and culture was published.
According to The Indian Express, “he is exploration of the life and relationships of patron saint of the Lingayat community Basavanna had attracted the ire of radicals in the community”.
The report goes on to quote senior journalist Subash Hugar who highlighted that “(in)one of the articles, he wrote that Channabasava, who is also a Lingayat seer, was born from a relationship between Basavanna’s sister and a cobbler. In another, he raised questions over Basavanna’s relationship with his wife”.
As a result of the death threats, he reportedly conducted his lectures at Karnatak University under police protection. And even as a group of Kannada writers and academics formed a committee in support of the book, as pointed out by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, he scrapped — albeit defiantly; dubbing it ‘intellectual suicide’ — controversial sections from his book.
In June last year, Dr Kalburgi courted controversy and invited the wrath of the right-wing once again. Fellow Kannada author UR Ananthamurthy had alluded to urinating on stone idols as a child. A few days later, Dr Kalburgi, himself a staunch opponent of idol worship, had said at a function that “there was nothing wrong in urinating on idols”. The police filed cases under sections 295A and 298 of the Indian Penal Code against both writers.
His All Controversies
The Marga 1 controversy:In 1989, Kalburgi was forced by the Lingayat temple-chiefs to recant the allegedly derogatory references to the founder of Veerashaivaism, Basava, his wife and sister. The controversy was about two articles in his book Marga 1. In the first, Kalburgi examined several vachanas (poems) written by Basaveshwara’s second wife Neelambike and concluded that her relationship with her husband may have been only platonic. In the other article, he pointed out the obfuscation by historians of the birth of Channabasava, another Virashaiva poet. Kalburgi, relying on historical records, argued that Channabasava could be the product of Basava’s sister Nagalambike’s marriage to Dohara Kakkaya, the cobbler-poet. After recanting his views Kalburgi had said, “I did it to save the lives of my family. But I also committed intellectual suicide on that day.”
Idol worship controversy:In June 2014, addressing a seminar on Anti-superstition Bill in Bangalore, Kalburgi cited U. R. Ananthamurthy’s 1996 book Bethale Puje Yake Kudadu, (“Why nude-worship is wrong”) in which the writer narrated his childhood experience of urinating on idols as an experiment to see whether there would be divine retribution.
This led to protests from the right-wing groups, Vishva Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal and Sri Ram Sena against both the writers. The Kannada critic, Nataraj Huliyar, alleged that Kalburgi had actually misquoted Ananthamurthy by calling his “evil-spirit stones” (devvada kallu), “stone idols” (devara kallu).
He was involved in a controversyfor saying ‘Hinduism’ is not a religion’: He faced ire from right wing groups such as VHP, Bhajrang Dal etc for repeated attacks on Hindu beliefs
His condemnation ofthe celebrations of Ganesh Chaturthi by followers of Basava philosophy had come under the scanner. He had maintained that worship of Ganesh idol was born out of myth and had no backing in the texts.