Interview: Ratan Tata on Tata Steel (July 2001)

“Given right incentives, India can be a steel supplier to the world”--Ratan Tata

My first conversation with Ratan Tata was while doing a cover story on Tata Steel for Business India, (July 23-Aug 5, 2001). Excerpts of which are reproduced below. The link to the story is also below. Tata Steel had just finished major modernisation of its Blast Furnace and had commissioned a brand new Cold Rolling Mill in collaboration with the Japanese giant Nippon Steel. And the veteran metallurgist and MD, Dr J J Irani was retiring and B Muthuraman was on the verge of taking over the leadership in 2001.

What impressed me about Ratan Tata was his straight talking and down to earth approach. When I dangled a bait in the form of a question regarding a claim by Tata Steel's PR in the media which I knew to be false or a "conditional truth". He immediately concurred with me that the claim was questionable and he has asked them to redo their calculations and show him. Very few business leaders are self critical or circumspect about superlative claims by their PR ! The full story on Tata Steel is here:

https://reflections-shivanand.blogspot.com/2007/08/tata-steel-renaissance.html

In a free-wheeling hour-long interview, Tata group chairman Ratan Tata spoke to Shivanand Kanavi ( July 2001) about the challenges faced at Tisco. Excerpts:

Q How do you look at your nine years as chairman of Tata Steel?

When I became the chairman, Tata Steel had just come out of the administered price regime where price increases were simply passed on to the consumer. The month I took over there was a crisis because freight equalisation had been discontinued and we were adversely affected since the major markets were in the south and the west. Tata Steel had come out of a seller’s market and hadn’t really oriented itself to the customer.

We set up two task forces, one to look at realisation and the other to look at costs, both of which were headed by Jamshed Irani. They went about looking at issues in a real hard way. We made some progress on both those scores. We started benchmarking ourselves with the best of the breed in the world. That really paid off, in terms of keeping great pressure on the level of our costs.

We also made a decision not to expand but modernise our facilities, and to move into flat products, which we saw as the growth area. We went through some difficult years in terms of cash flow and liquidity as we increased our levels of borrowings to see the various phases of modernisation through. Finally, the hot rolled mill and subsequently the cold rolled mill came into being. For a period of time, Tata Steel did not look hot to investors and analysts until we moved to the last phase of what we were doing.

The leadership in Jamshedpur has had a tremendous role to play in what was achieved. Jamshed Irani and his team have resolutely gone about making this transition, with no pulls and pressures that it should have been done in another way.

I think the only distraction would have been the view that Tata Steel should grow to 15 million tonnes, that it should be a volume producer as against a company that would be the best in its class. And perhaps, the period when one thought that Gopalpur would be the focal point of growth. I felt that growth in steel is going to be a difficult one and that we should consolidate ourselves and improve our operations before we looked at expansion.

Q What stops India from becoming the steel supplier to the world?

There are several issues. Koreans operate at 9:1 debt equity ratio, their interest rates are close to 1-2 per cent, whereas it is 18 per cent here. Tisco has had the benefit of the

Steel Development Fund, which is softer but which does not cover everything. The social costs in India and Tisco are a part of our baggage. Posco, for example, will bulldoze a plant that is obsolete and build another one in its place that is newer. We can’t do that in India. We need a MITI like approach to become supplier to the world. Here the steel industry has never been given the required incentives.

Q To build a modern company in Bihar must have been quite a challenge.

The credit has to go to a very strong community spirit in Jamshedpur. The people of Jamshedpur have a very strong sense of pride, and there is a sense of fear that it should not become like the rest. When I lived there, in the ’60s, there was a time when for Rs15,000 somebody could get killed. Finally, we had a good SP who cleaned up the place. So the rot can happen in Jamshedpur also. Tata Steel has been a fair corporate citizen, it has given a lot to the community. It has administered not in its own self -interest, but in the broader interest of the community.

Q Don’t investors question why you give away Rs100 crore every year to Jamshedpur and surroundings?

In particular, foreign shareholders think that this is baggage we are carrying and, in a manner of speaking, it is. But if you look at the industrial harmony and so on, I don’t think you can ascribe a value to it. This is a cost you have and despite that if you are still going to be the lowest cost steel producer, then no one should mind.

Q Instead of investing in ferrochrome and titanium why don’t you acquire steel?

Within India Tata Steel has looked at some options. But we recognized that, regrettably, the steel industry does not cover the cost of capital — and this is the global situation. Therefore, you do see reductions in capacities in various parts of the world. If you have to invest thousands of crores, as we did in the modernisation of the plant, and if it doesn’t give us a return that is equal to the cost of capital, then we have destroyed shareholder value. Moreover, just because you are Tata Steel does not mean that steel can be your only growth area. In the world you have companies that started in fertilizers and now are in pharmaceuticals. Companies like Mannesman that were in steel are now in telecom.

Q There are other group companies operating in the area of telecom, then why Tata Steel?

Tata Steel has not decided to get into telecom. We said let’s parcel out various parts of the telecom activity and look at the Group as a whole being in telecom. Ideally, you would have got one consolidated telecom company in the Group. But again, shareholders say: ‘This is my money and all I have is dividend returns from the company’. So, another way to do it is, you parcel it out even though that is a less efficient way of doing it. The bits are not in competition but complement each other. Maybe one day we will merge those into one.

Q Are you looking at acquiring steel plants abroad?

We are looking at plants abroad. However, we should be sure that we can manage that extra capacity on a global basis also. You could get a huge asset at a very good price, but you might end up having surplus capacity, which will be outside India. You then have to support it in terms of foreign exchange and we do not have a foreign base to do it. So we may be cautious in looking at these plants. Our ethic also prevents us from walking away from an acquisition when it sours.

Q Did McKinsey’s advise you to dump steel?

McKinsey’s did not tell us to dump this or dump that. McKinsey’s just gave us discussion notes in various industries. They raised some serious questions regarding the steel industry and whether it destroyed shareholder value. And I must say they awakened us to the fact that we had to do much more in steel to make it an investor-attractive area of business.

Q Last year Tata Steel made the most profits in the Group after TCS.

We need to be a little circumspect. Tisco has now got two high margin plants on line. It has shed its old processes. Crucial to producing and sustaining these results is growth in demand in its user industries, like auto, white goods and construction. Even if domestic demand picks up but there is over capacity in the world then you will be faced with low cost imports.

However, there are two pluses; one is that steel is a commodity. Hence, Tata Steel has been able to go all-out in production, covering its cost and dropping its price. The other advantage is, if the Indian market got bad you could export it. In product markets like trucks or refrigerators you can’t do both these things.

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Book Review: Inside the Boardroom

 

Book Review:

Inside the Board Room- How Behaviour Trumps Rationality” 

By R Gopalakrishnan and Tulsi Jayakumar, 

Rupa Publications 2023

 

On Board

The authors of this timely book; R Gopalakrishnan with his over 55 years of experience in leading Indian Corporations in various capacities from a trainee engineer in Hindustan Lever to leadership of several boards and Tulsi Jayakumar interested in family businesses, as an academic teaching management studies, have provided us with a delightful and useful work.

As the name suggests the book deals with what happens in a board room of different types of companies; professionally managed, family owned, promoter driven, large and small enterprises.

While the owners’, promoters’ role in the business dynamics of an enterprise is also discussed the focus of the book is the role of the CEO and the independent directors on the board.

The book briefly traces the evolution of corporate India’s board room particularly in the light of Cadbury Committee recommendations in 1992 in UK and the churn that resulted in the J J Irani Committee recommending changes in the Company law in India that led to the new version of the Company Law in 2005.

The Cadbury Committee had recommended that companies voluntarily accept: separation of roles of chairman and CEO; a majority in the board of independent directors; non-executive directors to be in the majority on the remuneration committee and playing active role in the audit committee. Though it was a UK focused report it had great influence on the evolution of corporate governance internationally.

Even in India it led later to the introduction of independent directors in all public companies, though not a majority; awareness about women in board rooms; need for diversity among independent directors in general and so on.

In this reviewer’s opinion the book is compulsory reading material not only for all corporate board members but also for management students and students aspiring to become company secretaries, compliance officers, market analysts and equity researchers etc.

The authors however continually stress that mandated or voluntarily accepted compliance standards and norms go only thus far and no further like the laws and constitutions. A more important and tricky factor in the board room, the authors point out, is behavioural. They posit that these issues play a very important role in board room dynamics.

That is what makes this slim book an interesting read and novel in approach.

They illustrate their thesis with innumerable cases studies of business failures that can be traced back to board room dynamics that stymied any course correction in time for these corporations. They draw their brief lessons; without falling into to the pitfall of merely compiling case studies in corporate governance; from the global as well as Indian corporate history.

The pages are enriched by a wide variety of stories from Enron, Worldcomm, Unilever, Lehman Brothers, Nestle, Rajat Gupta episode and dozens of others from global corporations. From the Indian corporate sector we have examples from YES Bank, Kingfisher Airlines, Ranbaxy, Satyam, Jet Airways, Tata Finance, HLL and several unnamed ones narrated anecdotally by R Gopalakrishnan.

The personal experiences and anecdotes from more than 20 company boards of which “Gopal” ( a third person short form used by R Gopalakrishnan in the book) was a part of; some as an executive director and many as an independent director, make the discussion more interesting and less a B-schoolish.

In the case of a business failure or a hint of a scam or unethical practices of a company the public opinion is almost always unmindful of explanations and excuses provided by the tainted leadership ie promoters. But the media and public make an equally searing criticism of the role of independent directors on the board, who often have impeccable credentials. “What were they doing all this time other than collecting hefty sitting fees and enjoying hospitality and other perks!” is a common refrain post facto.

Thus the question arises about the role of independent directors in the board, their fiduciary responsibility to keep in mind the overall sustained and sustainable growth of the company and the interests of minority and retail investors, whose interests they are supposed to protect at the same time not appearing to be obstructionist and perennially conservative and status-quoist on important matters in the board and so on. Easier said than done.

So the book deals at length with various tricky scenarios in the board and how independent directors should successfully navigate through them, how they should be aware of early warning signals of trouble, how they should at the same time contribute positively to the board proceedings to push for timely course correction, use their specialist knowledge for which they have been chosen to be on the board in the first place and so on.

The book provides many tips called mantras to provide an Indian touch to the discussion for all parts of the board, the leadership, the independent directors and CEO on how to carry out their fiduciary responsibilities and balance conflicting pulls and pushes.

The astute observations made by authors on behavior in board room have their reflection in fact in any group, organization, family scenarios. Thus the reader who may have nothing to do with board rooms also comes up with many a ‘aha’ moment.

Shivanand Kanavi

(Former VP TCS, Physicist, Business Journalist and Author; skanavi@gmail.com )

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Review: Art & Science of Managing Public Risks

 

Talking about disaster management

BOOK REVIEW SHIVANAND KANAVI Art and Science of Managing Public Risks Author:V S Ramamurthy, Dinesh K Srivastava, Shailesh Nayak Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Pages: 412 Price: ₹ 4,015 The three authors are senior scientists. Shailesh Nayak is a geologist who was also the secretary of the Department of Earth Sciences and has been deeply involved in India´s Antarctic projects. He played a key role in rolling out, in record time, a Tsunami Warning System for the Indian Ocean Region after the 2004 tsunami. V S Ramamurthy, a nuclear scientist, has had a long innings as secretary, Department of Science and Technology and has grappled with the issue of improving communication between scientists, policy planners, media and the public to promote rational rather than kneejerk solutions to key issues in scientific policy. Dinesh K Srivastava is a distinguished nuclear physicist, former director of the ambitious Variable Energy Cyclotron in Kolkata, and is deeply interested in climate change. Ashutosh Sharma of IIT Kanpur, an Infosys Prize winner in Chemical Sciences and also a former secretary, Department of Science and Technology, has written a scholarly and lyrical preface to the book. When such senior scientists venture into public policy, policymakers would do well to listen carefully. In fact, Art and Science of Managing Public Risks should be made compulsory reading to policymakers and disaster managers. It is perhaps the most exhaustive and comprehensive compendium of disasters of various types. The authors´ concerns range over both natural and manmade disasters. For example, it talks about climate disasters, cyclones, cloudbursts, landslides, flash floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis. It also tackles infectious diseases and epidemics such as plagues, polio, smallpox, malaria, TB, dengue, cholera, and Covid19. In industrial accidents, the book covers coal mine collapses, accidents in oil and gas fields, dam failures, transport and chemical accidents, the Bhopal gas tragedy, harm from pesticides and insecticides. The authors have also dealt with the fact that every technology developed by man so far has pros and cons when the costs and benefits are tallied over the life cycle of the project. So how should policy choices be made and why? How should the risks be communicated to policy makers and communities and through what channels and modus operandi? The authors have taken the same approach in the discussion on nuclear power and safety issues involved and with genetically modified (GM) crops and the fears and upsides, as the transgenic mustard debate has shown in an edible oil hungry India. Then there are developmental issues such as pollution, urban waste management, ewaste, biomedical waste management and so on. The book also discusses the nature of risk communication, dialogue and debate regarding policy choices. The authors conclude that the formulations of government policies are extremely vulnerable to public perceptions. Moreover, risk perceptions are highly individualistic; consequently, risk communication could be complex. The traditional forms of risk communication are often inadequate and ineffective. The authors argue that communication should be in the form of dialogue and not debate and should lead towards a consensus. Importantly, they point out that there is no alternative for governments to taking the public into confidence and empowering them with reliable information. “Humanity has always been vulnerable to a wide spectrum of public risks, such as natural disasters and infectious diseases. The recent developments in science & technology, while providing tools to manage public risks of different kinds, have also broadened the spectrum of public risks that we have to face,” they write. Across the world, they add, “governments as custodians of public good are expected to also hold the responsibility of managing public risks. With more and more countries opting for democratic forms of governance, we also see that formulation of government policies on managing public risks are highly vulnerable to public perceptions.” A classic example of differing risk perceptions from the last three decades is the GM foods. While farmers are eager to benefit from the many advantages of modern biotechnology and move on to Green Revolution 2.0, experts and nongovernmental organisations are divided in their opinions, resulting in the policy becoming a victim of procrastination at great cost to the nation. For example, Bt Cotton and Bt Brinjal have finally entered production legally or illegally; now, there is a prolonged evaluation of Dhara Mustard 11, when we are in dire need of better and more oilseed production. The authors have briefly mentioned the National Disaster Management Act and the agency created to handle disasters in India. One wishes that they had critically examined this law and made recommendations to make it more effective. (The reviewer is adjunct faculty at NIAS, Bengaluru. skanavi@gmail.com )

 

 

Book Review: Just Aspire by Ajai Chowdhry

 

 

A soft tale of hardware (appeared in Business Standard, June 21, 2023 )

In his book Just Aspire, Ajai Chowdhry tells an autobiographical tale that starts in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Nope, nothing like Zero Dark Thirty -- that 2012 Oscar and Golden Globe winner, about the US commando operation against Osama Bin Laden. This story starts with a well settled family in verdant Abbottabad in the hills near Kashmir, the starting point for many a trek into Hindu Kush and Karakoram. Mr Chowdhry´s father was a well known, well t odo lawyer, secretary of the District Congress Committee and an Urdu poet who also organised and patronised many a mushaira. The partition of the subcontinent upended the family, which had been well integrated in Abbottabad and had cultured neighbours of all communities. Arriving in Delhi as refugees from the communal violence, Chowdhry senior´s organisational skill sets and knowledge of law got him involved in the government´s refugee resettlement programme. His efforts were quickly recognised and he was absorbed in the bureaucracy and tasked to persuade some of the Rajputana princes to sign the Instrument of Accession to the Indian Union. After completing that assignment, he joined the newly formed Indian Administrative Service and was sent off to Central India as commissioner of Bundelkhand and Baghelkhand. Mr Chowdhry is naturally nostalgic about his early childhood in a large colonial bungalow fit for a sahib with a tiger cub as a pet. Eventually the Chowdhrys settled in Jabalpur. Mr Chowdhry is eloquent about his childhood, school and college days in Jabalpur. After graduating in the newly introduced electronics and telecommunication engineering, in Jabalpur Engineering College, he found he was more attracted to marketing electronics rather than working the public sector telecom organisations and joined DCM Data Products as a sales executive. That began a lifetime in marketing electronic products, starting with clunky and expensive electronic calculators. Mr Chowdhry´s hard work and ingenuity in selling these bulky machines paid off. For example, while everyone was targeting academic institutions he found that chemists in sugar mills needed a quick calculation of the sucrose content in the cane and the final sugar recovery in the production process. Persuaded by him, they found this new gadget really handy and started convincing their managements to buy them. Mr Chowdhry had spotted this opportunity and visited literally every sugar mill in rural Maharashtra to achieve his sales target. Similarly, he found that irrigation engineers in Maharashtra needed quick calculations to release water to farmers and successfully targeted them too. When PCs were two decades away and only a handful of large companies in the government and private sector could afford mainframes, these calculators, especially the programmable kind, were very useful for fairly complex and quick calculations. This reviewer used one of these DCM Data Products´s programmable calculators for tedious and complex calculations while doing research in theoretical physics at IIT Bombay in the 1970s, yielding results worthy of publishing in peer reviewed international journals of physics. Mr Chowdhry´s tales of marketing advanced tech products hold a major lesson for today´s marketing executives. If you are diligent and observant, then you can find opportunities in surprising corners and even in remote and rural India. Though he was doing well in DCM, he was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug in his 20s, which was unusual in 1976. So he struck out with his seniors and mentors, Shiv Nadar and Arjun Malhotra from DCM Data Products, to found what went on to become one of the leaders of the Indian IT industry, HCL. HCL (then known as Hindustan Computers Ltd) was then into producing and marketing hardware starting with microcomputers and then PCs and so on. Since the components and PCBs and later motherboards were not being made in India most people were importing them from Singapore. Some were accused of screwdriver technology, profiting from high protective tariffs, and some of even using the grey market. After his first assignment in selling microcomputers in Tamil Nadu, Mr Chowdhry was sent to another frontier, Singapore. Shiv Nadar of HCL had taken the bold decision to establish a unit in Singapore, named appropriately as Far East Computers to make and sell hardware there. Mr Chowdhry made that a success, spending his time gaining valuable international experience in the highly competitive markets of South East Asia. His tales of the social life of an expat in Singapore in the 1980s are charmingly narrated. In 1994, he became the chief executive officer of HCL Info Systems in India. Within a few years as telecom policy changed in 2002 making mobile telephony more lucrative, Mr Chowdhry´s long relationship with Nokia came in handy in persuading the Finnish multinational to make and sell affordable mobile phones in India. HCL took the lead in selling those phones via their marketing network. Overall, the book is a good read and the blemishes are few and far between. It lacks an index, for one and a few events are not dated. The reader will be disappointed if he expects an analysis of the history of the hardware industry in India, its challenges and the future from a veteran. The author also has a penchant for long quotations from various favourite management gurus. It may have been more exciting and instructive to young executives reading the book if he had drawn anecdotes and lessons from his own extensive marketing experience in India and abroad. The reviewer is adjunct faculty at NIAS, Bengaluru and former VP of TCS. skanavi@gmail.com BOOK REVIEW SHIVANAND KANAVI Just Aspire: Notes on Technology, Entrepreneurship & the Future Author: Ajai Chowdhry Publisher: HarperCollins Pages: 252 Price: ₹ 599

 

 

Book Review: Failure is not an Option by Veer Sagar

 Management and Chutzpah

Shivanand Kanavi

( Appeared in the Business Standard, May 9, 2023)

Book Review

“Failure is not an Option -- When the chips are down get up and get going”- by Veer Sagar, Bloomsbury (2023)

 

 

Veer Sagar is a well-known name in Indian IT industry. He started his career as a Computer Engineer in Dunlop, in the 1960’s; pioneered the application of Operation Research, a mathematical approach to obtain optimum solutions to various commonly occurring conundrums in Management decision making in production planning, sales, finance etc. That was his first job in an iconic British multinational with a “pucca sahib” culture that had invented rubber tyres and hence obviously thought they knew everything to know about tyre business. So trying out anything new and that too based on inputs from a rookie way down the food chain was blasphemous. However Mr Sagar, all of twenty had already learnt the lessons in ‘how to win friends and influence people’ and got his way and made a mark in his job and started a rapid rise in the company.

After two decades in Dunlop, practicing IT as a management decision support system for all core corporate functions in a tyre company, Sagar moved into sales and marketing successfully. But when he saw that the mother company in UK was preparing to divest its holdings in India to a Dubai based Indian investor, Manu Chhabria, he moved to a hardcore British computer company, ICL (ICIM) to head its marketing in 1984. ICL was also once iconic but was already in decline with relentless competition and rapid changes in technology from a plethora of American companies led by the veritable IBM. Soon in 1987 ICL too divested from ICIM in favour of another Indian business group, RPG which had its own plans for the company.

Mr Sagar now moved to another pioneering company in North India, DCM Data Products as CEO. This too was in decline by then. With a decade in DCM and its repositioning as DCM Data Systems, a solution provider and not a mere hardware manufacturer and its overall change in fortunes for the better, earned Sagar an enviable title of ‘turn around Manager’ in the Business media. However there were winds of change in the hardware industry and PCs had entered the Indian market both in the government and in private companies. Most PC companies were importing knocked down kits from East Asia and DCM could not compete with them.

With telecom infrastructure rapidly changing in the 90s, Mr Sagar saw a new opportunity opening up in back office operations and brought in new business too. However the DCM owners disagreed and Mr Sagar quit and plunged into a new phase as an entrepreneur at 55. He was one of the pioneers in starting up in 1997 what we call today as IT Enabled Services or BPO industry. His successful venture, Selectronics was mentioned by the Time magazine in 2000 and NYT columnist Thomas Friedman in his book “The Lexus and the Olive Tree—Understanding Globalisation”.

His stint as an entrepreneur was not all rosy. He had to learn many costly and hard lessons from some unethical practices of some of his business partners.

The book brings out that Veer Sagar in all his professional life employed what the Americans call ‘chutzpah’ and thereby hangs a tale and also a very well written book that never bores you with lectures on management theory. He draws a host of simple to state yet extremely important practical lessons from over five decades of experience first as an executive and then as an entrepreneur.

He has a style of crisp and engaging storytelling. At the same time each story has a purpose beyond recall and nostalgia and actually leading to some lessons for an executive that Mr Sagar sums up neatly at the end of each story or episode. Interestingly he constructs almost his entire life story from childhood; student days till the university; his professional career of over 50 years; his experience at entrepreneurship in the ‘90s when startups were still new and BPO was yet unknown and so on. In fact he claims that he coined the word IT Enabled Services in those days. He also weaves in his family life, friends, associates, role as a policy advisor to the government in a cornucopia of industry bodies and committees.

I would recommend it to any budding corporate executive in any industry.

The only blemish I found in the book is the lack of an index at the end.

Shivanand Kanavi

(Shivanand is Adjunct Faculty at NIAS, Bengaluru. He has had varied career as a theoretical physicist, Business Journalist, author and former VP of IT giant TCS. He can be reached at skanavi@gmail.com )

 

 

What is Lingayata

What is Lingayata?

A Brief Look Into the Evolution of a Term Favoured by Media But Grasped by Few

The current day ‘Lingayatism’ has a past that is rich in literary output and unique in its philosophical teachings.

 Shivanand Kanavi

https://thewire.in/history/lingayata-karnataka-vachanas-sharanas

                        A portrait of Basavanna (1105-1167 CE) by artist Vishakha Kanavi.               

 

A prolific efflorescence of Bhakti literature emerged in the form of vachana – short poetic prose or free verse poetry – in simple Kannada in the 12th century, in North Karnataka. To this day about 12,000 vachanas of this period authored by over a hundred spiritual seekers and saints, including over 30 women have been discovered. These poet saints called themselves ‘Sharanas’. They hailed from almost all classes of society, professions, and castes – including outcastes or “untouchables”. 

They declared that they are a new community to which all those who believed and practiced certain foundational tenets could join on initiation. 

These tenets included: 

1) Equality and mutual respect of all Sharanas no matter what their past caste or community. 

2) Equality among seekers, the Sharanas, without any gender discrimination. 

3) Form of worship was personal and private to a symbol they called ‘Ishta Linga’. It was primarily meditative and yogic. The Ishta Linga could be carried on your body like a pendant and worshipped anywhere. Hence the name Lingayata — one who worships his personal Ishta Linga.

4) They considered all forms of labour and means of livelihood (‘kayaka’) a form of worship, provided the honest earnings from labour (kayaka) are primarily used for social redistribution, called ‘dasoha’. 

5) They stressed the importance of being a compassionate and socially productive human being in this world and in this life. They ignored the other worlds of heaven and hell, as well as theories of rebirth.

6) By asserting the importance of socially productive and honest labour as a form of worship to attain spiritual enlightenment, Sharanas also ignored renunciation and ascetic ‘sanyasa’ as the dominant and preferred path to enlightenment, as preached by the existing forms of Vedic, Agamic, Buddhist, Jain, and other traditions. Thereby they showed a path to spiritual enlightenment for all ordinary householders, farmers, traders, artisans and all working men and women.

7) They insisted on eating together among Sharanas defying the taboos imposed by caste discrimination, as they were all spiritually equal.

They lucidly expressed their views in the people’s language of the region, Kannada, on their spiritual pursuit. They primarily conceived their god as personal and formless. They also critically and incisively commented profusely on prevalent precepts and practices such as: meaningless Vedic and Agamic rituals, animal sacrifices during such rituals, and intermediation of priests in any form of worship. They also opposed rituals associated with animism and polytheism. They rejected temple-based worship dominated by priests and rituals.

They opposed discrimination against women in the spiritual field. They broke the Brahminical taboos which regarded women as inferior and unfit for spiritual self-realisation, because of their natural biological functions of menstruation and child birth. 

Critics of ritual

The Sharanas – also called ‘Vachanakaras‘ – not only ridiculed the Karma Kanda or Vedic and Agamic rituals of yajna, homa, havana, animal sacrifice and elaborate temple worship, but they also confronted all those Vedantins and Advaitins who merely spoke of the abstract high falutin ideas of atma-brahma but blatantly practised caste and gender discrimination. Vachanakaras frequently called such hypocrites as ‘vag–advaitins (‘advaitins only in words’).’

Among the Vachanakaras of 12th century, those that stand out with their incisive commentary are Basavanna (1105–1167) and his contemporaries, Allama Prabhu and Akka Mahadevi. Many other Sharanas, over a hundred, also contributed to creating the new ethos and the new community’s norms as well as its metaphysics.

What they advocated in words as well as deeds was spiritually liberating and attracted a large number of working people of all castes including ‘untouchables’, artisans, farmers, traders, and some enlightened Brahmins as well. 

The popularity of the leading Vachanakaras led the poets in the region to write hagiographies of Sharanas in the Puranic style. These hagiographic works were still set in the Puranic and old Shaivite tradition and not the new radical ideas and practices of Vachanakaras. 

 In the 13th century notable works in this regard are Palkurike Somanatha’s Basava Puranamu in Telugu and the great Kannada poet Harihara’s works (in the form of ragale poems) regarding Basava, Allama, Akka Mahadevi, and many other Sharanas. The Kannada version of Basava Purana inspired by the Telugu Basava Puranamu was written by Bhima Kavi in the 14th century.

There was growing popularity and numbers in this new community whose membership was open and inclusive. Unlike other sects of Hinduism, even today one can become a Lingayat through initiation, despite being born into another religion. Soon it led to royal patronage in some Deccan kingdoms like Vijayanagara, particularly during the reign of Devaraya II (reign 1422–46 CE). 

Later important royal dynasties in Karnataka became followers of Lingayatism. It is important to note that these kings and queens considered their faith a personal matter and were equally patronising all religions in their statecraft as was prevalent practice. 

For example, the Nayakas of Ikkeri or Keladi who ruled vast regions of present-day Karnataka and outside (1490–1763); Haleri dynasty in the kingdom of Kodagu (1633–1834) and many other smaller kingdoms. One of the most remembered is the Lingayat queen Rani Chennamma of Kittur (1778–1829), known for her inspiring role in the anti-colonial struggle against the British.

Teachings and literature

Lingayatism attained the features of an established sect with elite patronage and Lingayat literature, which also came to be known at that time as Veerashaiva literature, flourished from the 15th century onwards.

The Vachana and Sharana teachings resurfaced in the form of several compilations and at least four commentaries known as Shunyasampadane (attainment of the void or path to enlightenment). The declarative or dialogic form of many vachanas lent themselves to be cast as part of a spiritual dialogue or a discussion in a peer group. Such a forum of peers was not directly mentioned by Basava or Allama in their vachanas but it was later imagined as a spiritual forum called Anubhava Mantapa (hall of spiritual experience). 

Vachanas were not written either by academic philosophers or for such philosophers, but for ordinary people in their mother tongue, Kannada. Neither were vachanas written as canonical texts or foundational sutras for a new darshana or a philosophical school like Sankhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaiseshika, Purva Mimamsa, Vedanta, etc. 

Vachanas were utterings of mystics based on their spiritual experiences and reflection. While some common tenets, concepts, and approaches can be distilled from the Vachanakaras, one also finds great individuality and diverse approaches among them in search of spiritual enlightenment as opposed to a monolithic philosophical system.

It should be noted that Sharanas were respectful towards Tamil Shaiva saints of an earlier period, known as Nayanars, (6th-8th Century CE)  and called them the ‘63 Puratanaru’ (sixty-three ancients). However, what the Lingayat Vachanakaras did was construct their own radically new community.

The Vachana form continued to be popular among post-Basava mystics till the 18th century, so much so that we have another 10,000 or more Vachanas written in the later period (15th to 18th century). 

The complete Vachana literature edited and published today by the Kannada Pustaka Pradhikara under the general editorship of the late M.M. Kalburgi by the government of Karnataka in two volumes has over 20,000 vachanas. The process of collecting manuscripts, authenticating them, producing critical editions, weeding out spurious ones etc. started in the 1890s and is now more or less complete.

A selection of 2,500 vachanas edited by Kalburgi for Basava Samiti have now been translated, and published under the leadership of Aravind Jatti, into over 20 languages including English, French, Mandarin, Arabic, Angika, Kashmiri, Dogri, Santhali, Bodo, Assami, Odiya, Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Urdu, Bengali and so on. More, including Persian, Spanish, Bajjika and so on are in the works.

In the century-long effort in this direction many institutions like Karnatak University, Dharwad; Basava Samiti, Bengaluru and several Lingayat mathas have given institutional support. Many scholars have contributed to editing and interpreting the meaning and intent of Vachanas. To name a few: F.G. Halakatti, C. Uttangi, S.S. Basavnal, Siddheshwara Swamiji, S.C. Nandimath, R.C. Hiremath, S.S. Bhusnurmath, M.M. Kalburgi, L. Basavaraju, H. Tipperudraswamy, M. Chidananda Murthy, V.B. Rajur, N.G. Mahadevappa, A.K. Ramanujan, H.S. Shiva Prakash, D.R. Nagaraj and O.L. Nagabhushana Swamy. 

Today, almost all the Vachanas are available on the internet in a searchable database called Vachana Sanchaya due to the efforts of a team led by O.L. Nagabhushana Swamy (https://vachana.sanchaya.net/ ).

Similarly about 1500 vachanas of Basavanna in Kannada as well as their translation into multiple languages are available at http://vachana.taralabalu.in/vachana.php?poet=137  of the Sirigere Taralabalu Matha.

Vachanas are commonly recited and sung in the villages and towns of Karnataka both in religious and secular functions. Prominent musicians like Pt Mallikarjun Mansur, Pt Basavraj Rajguru, Pt Siddharam Jambaldinni, Pt Venkatesh Kumar and others popularized the singing of vachanas in their classical Hindusthani concerts as well as in Radio, TV and modern music industry in the past nearly a hundred years.

The social, political, and economic circumstances which led to this efflorescence in the 12th century and the 900-year trajectory of this community are still being explored. A significant modern contributor to this multidisciplinary exploration is historian Manu V. Devadevan.

Two forms

By the 15th century, the popular inclusive community of spiritual democracy initiated by Basava and other Sharanas started taking the form of a ‘faith that one is born into’ rather than voluntarily initiated into. Concomitantly high priests emerged to interpret the faith and carry out new rituals along with a large mass of followers of the faith. As traders, landowners, sections of contemporary elite, including some royal families, started joining the faith, there was a move to achieve formal ‘respectability’. 

Historically it took two forms. One was to pay obeisance to Basava and Allama but move away from their radical and experiential approach and instead evolve a formal metaphysics and a spiritual path called “shat sthala” (six stage path) which can be cast in a familiar tradition. This attempt then associated Lingayatism to some form of Advaita. Shakti Vishisht Advaita, Shiva Yoga etc were such new formal labels.

The other attempt by Agamic Shaivism to claim Lingayat as part of old Brahminical Shaivism. This trend headed by so called “pancha acharyas” denied the role of 12th-century Sharanas as founders of Lingayatism, including their radical new ideas and practices. 

In the medieval period the community also started calling itself Veerashaiva along with Lingayat as synonyms. This was contrary to the fact that all forms of Shaivism worshipped a Puranic, anthropomorphic Shiva as their deity, believed to be the resident of the mythical Kailasa, etc. Whereas, the Sharanas of 12th century did not recognise the Puranic Shiva as their deity. Nor did they recognise the associated temples and pilgrim centres like Jyotir Lingas and so on. Though the Sharanas called their deity Shiva, it was a formless Para Shiva. They identified it with void, space, Bayalu, an omnipresent element that is a part of every human being and not residing only in idols and temples, Shunya – not to be confused with the Buddhist Shunyavad – and so on. 

It is also to be noted that from 16th to 19th Century several Lingayat seers interacted with an open mind with Muslim Sufis and saints in the Deccan. As a result, Lingayat Mathas of Savalgi Shivalingeshwara, Shirahatti Fakeer Swamy, Kodekal Basavanna, and others, even today have a large following among both Lingayats and Muslims and both communities participate actively in the annual jatras and Rath Utsavs.

A significant point to note is that in the 1980s and early ‘90s hardly any Lingayat seer among the hundreds of prominent ones, joined the Vishwa Hindu Parishad or supported the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.

The present

There are two major trends in the present day Lingayat community. One is to go to the spiritual roots of the community in the radical teachings of 12th-century Sharanas and Vachanakaras. Many in this segment also believe that Lingayatism should not be identified with Vedic or Agamic Hinduism but a separate way of life and religion, like Sikhism. They base their argument on the radical precepts of the vachanas of Sharanas of the 12th century as well as many practices of the community which are very different from traditional Hindus. For example, all Lingayats bury their dead, as against cremation among Hindus and so on. It is not known when this practice started. Lingayat burial rituals however are different from Islamic and Christian burial rituals. 

Late M M Kalburgi, who was a prominent academic and researcher of Lingayatism and Kannada culture and literature, strongly advocated the recognition of Lingayatism as a separate religion and not as a part of Hinduism. He was backed by many Lingayat seers and intellectuals. There were several large mass rallies held in different parts of Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Delhi during 2017-18 demanding recognition from the Union government of Lingayat as separate religion, like Sikhism. 

The other trend in the Veerashaiva community pays formal obeisance to Basava and other Sharanas but basically adopts various practices of older Shaivism including temple worship. It recognises a priestly class (called Aiyanavaru or Jangamas) among Lingayats to perform rituals. This segment also practises caste discrimination and endogamy within sub groups of Lingayats (based on their former professions) like Jangama, Banajiga, Panchamasali, Sada, Ganiga etc. They also do not object to being part of traditional Hinduism.

Today Lingayats constitute an influential community in Karnataka and exist in significant numbers in Maharashtra, Telangana, and in smaller numbers in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. They are found in all professions and classes. 

More than 300 Lingayat mathas (monasteries) have been documented by researchers. Mathas are local and a few of them have a couple of branches. All of them are independent and autonomous with no centralized structure. They are local community institutions supported by land grants from devotees. Some are centuries old and many are more recent. Many mathas have grants from devotees of different castes, communities, and religions. The properties of the mathas are managed by a committee appointed by the devotees in the form of a trust. The committee then invites seers trained in the theory and practice of Lingayatism to provide the local community both moral and religious leadership. Swamijis in these mathas also act as social and moral counsellors and are often approached by devotees to arbitrate in many familial or property disputes. When any Swamiji does not fulfill his role as moral and religious leader in the community there have been cases of removal of a swamiji from a matha by the devotees on grounds of moral turpitude and a new Swamiji installed. 

 Lingayats were able to access modern education under British colonialism due to the efforts of many intellectuals, businessmen and landowners in the community who started several schools and colleges. Significantly, Lingayat swamijis and mathas played a major role in the spread of modern education since the beginning of the 20th century. Many mathas all over Karnataka made special efforts to provide free boarding and lodging for poor students in their Prasada Nilayas without discriminating on the basis of caste and continue to do so. Thus for over a century, lakhs of poor students could get modern school and college education.

These efforts have led to the presence of Lingayats in very large numbers not only in the traditional professions of farmers, traders, and artisans but also in modern professions such as medicine, law, engineering, academia, and administration. Today, with their large presence in the economy and academia, they play a significant role in Karnataka’s political, cultural, and social life.

Shivanand Kanavi is a theoretical physicist, business journalist, author, former Vice-President of TCS, and is currently Adjunct Faculty at NIAS, Bengaluru. Can be reached at skanavi@gmail.com.

The above is excerpted from a contribution by Shivanand Kanavi to “Indians: Civilization and Histories”, edited by G.N. Devy, Tony Joseph, and Ravi Korisettar, published by the Aleph Book Company.