(a) The Virashaiva Movement of Southern Deccan in the twelfth century was essentially an attempt at social reform. Discuss. (15…

(a) The Virashaiva movement as social reform

The 12th-century Virashaiva movement led by Basavanna (c. 1130–1167) in the Kalachuri kingdom was fundamentally an egalitarian social critique. By rejecting Vedic ritualism, temple-centric worship, pollution taboos, and caste hierarchies, it instituted radical social egalitarianism through the Anubhava Mantapa (hall of spiritual experience) and championed gender equality, epitomised by women mystics like Akka Mahadevi. It upheld kayaka (work as worship) and dasoha (sharing of earnings), permitted widow remarriage, and practised burial instead of cremation. Its social radicalism provoked the crisis at Kalyana around 1167, when a marriage between the son of a Dalit convert and the daughter of a Brahmin convert led to persecution by the Kalachuri king Bijjala, whom Basavanna served as minister. However, characterising it purely as social reform understates its theological core—monotheistic Ishtalinga devotion and the Shatsthala path—as well as its linguistic assertion via vernacular Kannada Vachanas. Furthermore, the radical casteless ideal faced internal contradictions, as the movement eventually underwent institutionalisation into the distinct Lingayat community with its own social stratification.

(b) Regional courts and the Hindustani gharanas

While imperial Mughal courts provided foundational synthesis—exemplified by Tansen’s lineage—the distinct gharanas of Hindustani classical music (Gwalior, Agra, Kirana, Jaipur-Atrauli, Patiala) were primarily products of 18th- and 19th-century regional patronage. Following Mughal decline, regional princely courts across Awadh, Rajputana, and the Maratha states sheltered migrating musicians, fostering specialised vocal idioms nurtured through hereditary guru-shishya parampara. The Gwalior gharana grew under the Scindias through Haddu and Hassu Khan, Patiala under the Patiala court, Rampur-Sahaswan under the Nawabs of Rampur, Jaipur-Atrauli through Alladiya Khan at Jaipur and Kolhapur, and Kirana through Abdul Karim Khan with support from Baroda and Mysore, while Lucknow under the Nawabs of Awadh nurtured thumri. Nonetheless, imperial Delhi initially established the cross-regional classical idiom that these regional nodes diversified. By the early 20th century, court dependence dissolved as urban public platforms, recording technology, and V.N. Bhatkhande’s musicological documentation institutionalised classical music into modern national pedagogy.

(c) Vijayanagara and the Deccan Sultanates: strategy and economy over culture

The prolonged warfare between Vijayanagara and the Bahmani kingdom (and its successor sultanates) was driven by geopolitical and resource competition rather than civilizational antagonism. The primary material driver was control over the fertile Raichur Doab and the Konkan-Goa coastal corridor, crucial for customs revenue, pepper trade, and the strategic import of Arabian warhorses—a trade later complicated by Portuguese naval dominance. The diamond mines of the Krishna valley further intensified this rivalry.

The pattern runs through the period. The first war over Mudkal and the Doab came as early as 1367, the Bahmani minister Mahmud Gawan seized Goa in 1470 to control the horse ports, and Krishnadeva Raya took Raichur in 1520 with Portuguese musketeers after the Portuguese had captured Goa (1510) and offered Vijayanagara a monopoly of the horse trade. Rama Raya then played the sultanates against one another, intervening in their wars on whichever side suited him, until Bijapur, Ahmadnagar, Golconda and Bidar combined against him.

Contemporary chronicles by Firishta and Fernão Nuniz reveal a pragmatic realpolitik marked by shifting coalitions, cross-confessional mercenary employment (such as Deva Raya II employing Muslim archers and Vijayanagara generals commanding Sultanate troops), dynastic marriages, and shared courtly aesthetics. The climactic Battle of Talikota (1565) was thus the culmination of balance-of-power diplomacy and territorial containment, not religious warfare. Older writers such as Robert Sewell cast Vijayanagara as a Hindu bulwark against Islam, and Firishta’s chronicle uses the language of holy war, but recent work by Richard Eaton and Phillip Wagoner, showing Vijayanagara’s adoption of Islamicate dress, titles (Hindu-raya-suratrana) and architecture, supports the strategic and economic reading.