While Valentine’s Day is celebrated worldwide to honour a saint who went against the edict of the Roman king Claudius, we must not forget that our 12th century saint, Basavanna, did an equally daring act for which he too suffered royal persecution.Valentine was incarcerated, tortured and finally killed for he solemnised the weddings of fresh recruits when a royal edict expressly prohibited this. King Claudius II, a 3rd century Roman king, forbade soldiers to marry, as he believed that a wife at home would dull a warrior’s edge. As couples will be couples, the urge to marry was probably equal to, if not stronger than, the lust for war.That is why the young who wanted to marry under God could only turn to Valentine. He stood up against Claudius II and united young soldiers with their loved ones in holy matrimony.Basavanna, who is remembered and venerated as a Shaivite Bhakti saint and as a leading Lingayat social reformer, was also attacked by the king — whom he once served loyally — for officiating, indeed encouraging, inter-caste marriages.Bijjala II of the Kalachuri dynasty was incensed when he heard that Basavanna was actually putting words into action and defying the established order by presiding over inter-caste marriages, which destabilised the ritual hierarchy at its very root.As long as Basavanna did not put his beliefs into practice, he was a favoured subject of his king. However, once he decided to walk the talk, every one of his patrons walked far away from him. Almost instantly, from a royal minister, Basavanna became an outcast.Valentine was imprisoned and later executed, but he stayed true to his convictions till the very end. The Feast of St Valentine was established by Pope Gelasius I in 496, a full two centuries and more after Valentine’s death. Basavanna, too, was not immediately hailed as a saint and reformer as the orthodoxy that influenced the king chased him away to make sure he received no attention. Basavanna’s poetic verses, or vachanas, that expound his teachings, came to prominence much later.The impressive consolidation of Basavanna’s powerful vachanas happened over a period of 200-300 years after his death. These were gathered by generations of his disciples and that is how his message received historical and popular recognition.Just as Basavanna advocated the unity of humankind and critiqued social barriers between people, Valentine’s adoration goes well beyond the Catholic Church today. From Western Catholicism and Protestantism to Pietists and Lutherans, as well as Eastern Orthodoxy and the Melkite Greek community, Valentine is commemorated in the entire Christian world, regardless of the various schisms that exist within it.Basavanna is not just revered as a leading Lingayat preacher today, but his statue stands in the Parliament House in Delhi as well as in London by the Thames river. There are numerous places of worship where Basavanna is hailed as the principal purveyor of Shaivite Bhakti. This persuasion advances immersion in God and is contrary to Shankaracharya’a quest for unified knowledge.Valentine’s relics, too, are to be found in Santa Prassede in Rome and his flower-decked skull is in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, also in Rome. He too symbolises love above all else.It is hardly surprising then that these two saints should be preaching identical lessons where spiritual bonding among peoples is the principal vehicle of religion. Bhakti centralises devotion, which falls in line with a disregard for primordial and religious differences. Likewise, with Valentine too.It is just an extension of Valentine’s outreach to the entire Christian community that has spontaneously projected him as a symbol of romance and affection, not just among doting couples, but between people in general.Even as religions go to war to show which among them is the most peaceful, it is those like Basavanna and Valentine who strive to breach religious boundaries and sing about the ties of affection that should unify us. Organised religion may take another route and end up in sectarian bigotry, but Valentine and Basavanna remind us to not forget the basis of what it is to be human.Valentine’s Day could equally be Basavanna’s Day. They both lived to fight for the same cause. Both suffered at the hands of the powers of the day, but both live with greater vigour in our times. To honour them, we must accept their message in its true and enlarged form and not restrict ourselves to just romantic love.— The writer taught sociology at JNU
