Award, intnl study centre to honour Basaveshwara: PM

Bangalore, June 23 (UNI) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today assured to recommend instituting a national award for social harmony and unity in the name of social reformer Basaveshwara and setting up an international study centre on his teachings and philosophy in New Delhi.

Releasing a commemorative coin in honour of the 12th century crusader, he said he would recommend the Ministries concerned to take up the matter.

The Prime Minister gave the assurance following a request to this effect from Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy at the function.

''Much before Mahatma Gandhi made us acknowledge the dignity of manual labour, Basaveshwara underlined its importance and gave respectability to it,'' Dr Singh said. He proclaimed that all members of the State were labourers, some may be intellectual labourers and others manual labourers and his encouragement of manual labour in the 12th century contributed to the enrichment of crafts and the well being of artisans, he added.

The administrators of the country and all those engaged in public life must bear in mind that the teachings of the social reformer to treat every body equally, irrespective of faith and sex, he said.

As a Chief Minster in the court of King Bijjala, he had worked hard to raise the level of morality in public life and wanted the administrators to show exemplary conduct while discharing their duties, Dr Singh added.

The Prime Minister said Basaveshwara stood out as an extraordinary personality in the history of social reforms of India.

He wielded temporal power and at the same time had spitual bent of mind. He fought against ritualistic, social rigidities and for a more human social order. He was a crusader against untoucability and worked to set up a classless and casteless society. Dr Singh said an important cause that the spiritual leader espoused was the status of women, long before the modern society took up the cause of gender equality.

Basaveshwara was a great son of the country and great spiritual leader of Karnataka. He had admitted people of all castes into his fold and stressed the imprortance of equality of man. His religious academy, Anubhabava Mantap, was a concrete example of social democracy, he said.

''This commemorative coin is but a small tokan of our love, admiration and regard for the life and messages of Mahatma Basaveshwara. I hope this public celebration of his life and deed will inspire newer generations,'' he said.

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