Love Across Centuries, Why Valentine’s Day Could Also Be Basavanna’s Day
Every year on February 14, the world celebrates Valentine’s Day. Couples exchange flowers and chocolates, restaurants offer special menus, and the air fills with the sentiment of romantic love. The day honours a saint who, according to tradition, defied a Roman emperor’s edict to secretly marry young soldiers to their beloveds, paying for his defiance with imprisonment and death.
But as sociologist Dipankar Gupta reminds us, there is another saint—closer to home, equally defiant, and with a remarkably similar story—who deserves to be remembered on this day. Basavanna, the 12th-century poet, philosopher, and social reformer from Karnataka, also stood up against royal authority to perform inter-caste marriages, challenging the very foundations of the ritual hierarchy. He too suffered persecution. He too was cast out by the king he once served. And his message of love, equality, and human unity resonates just as powerfully today.
Gupta’s argument is not merely historical. It is a call to broaden our understanding of love—to see it not just as a private emotion between individuals, but as a public principle that challenges oppression, breaches boundaries, and unites humanity. Valentine’s Day, he suggests, could equally be Basavanna’s Day.
The Two Saints: Parallel Lives, Parallel Defiances
The story of St. Valentine is familiar to many. Emperor Claudius II, ruling Rome in the 3rd century, believed that unmarried soldiers fought better. He forbade young men from marrying, thinking that a wife at home would dull a warrior’s edge. But love, as Gupta notes, is persistent. Couples yearned to be united, and they turned to Valentine, a priest who defied the emperor and performed secret weddings. When Claudius discovered this, Valentine was imprisoned, tortured, and eventually executed. He stayed true to his convictions till the very end.
Basavanna’s story, while less known globally, is remarkably parallel. Born in 1134 in what is now Karnataka, Basavanna rose to become a minister in the court of King Bijjala II of the Kalachuri dynasty. But he was not merely an administrator; he was a revolutionary thinker who challenged the caste system and the ritualistic Brahminical orthodoxy of his time. Through his vachanas—short, powerful poems in Kannada—he preached the equality of all human beings, the dignity of labour, and the importance of direct, personal devotion to God (Shiva) without the mediation of priests.
As long as Basavanna kept his beliefs confined to philosophy, he remained a favoured subject. But when he began to put his words into action—when he started presiding over inter-caste marriages, uniting couples from different social orders—the established powers turned against him. King Bijjala was incensed. Such marriages struck at the very root of the ritual hierarchy. Basavanna was hounded, forced to flee, and died in 1168, a political exile.
Both men were persecuted by the powers of their day. Both died for their defiance. And both, in time, were posthumously elevated to sainthood. The Feast of St. Valentine was established by Pope Gelasius I in 496, more than two centuries after his death. Basavanna’s vachanas were collected and compiled by generations of disciples over 200-300 years, gradually cementing his reputation as a saint and reformer.
The Message: Love as Social Equality
The parallels between the two saints are striking, but Gupta’s argument goes deeper. It is about the nature of their message. For both Valentine and Basavanna, love was not merely a private emotion; it was a public principle with revolutionary implications.
Valentine’s defiance of Claudius was about the right of individuals to form unions based on affection, against the dictates of state power. It was a assertion that love between two people could not be subordinated to the king’s military ambitions. In this sense, Valentine stood for the autonomy of the personal against the totalizing claims of the state.
Basavanna’s defiance went further. By performing inter-caste marriages, he was challenging an entire social order—a hierarchy that had been sanctified by religion and enforced by custom for centuries. He was asserting that love could transcend the boundaries of caste, that the human heart was not bound by the rules of ritual purity. This was not just a matter of individual choice; it was a fundamental critique of social inequality.
Both saints, in their own ways, were preaching that spiritual bonding among peoples is the principal vehicle of religion. They stood against the use of religion to divide and exclude, and for the use of faith to unite and include. As Gupta writes, “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.”
Bhakti and Devotion: A Shared Spiritual Grammar
Basavanna’s philosophy is rooted in the Bhakti tradition, a powerful current of devotional religion that swept across India from the 7th century onwards. Bhakti centralizes devotion (bhakti) to a personal god as the path to salvation, often rejecting ritualism, priestly mediation, and social hierarchy. It is, as Gupta notes, contrary to the path of knowledge (jnana) advocated by philosophers like Shankaracharya. Bhakti is about immersion in God through love, not intellectual realization of a formless absolute.
This emphasis on devotion and love creates a natural affinity with Valentine’s message. Both traditions place affection at the center of the religious life. Both see love as a force that transcends institutional boundaries. Both have been embraced by diverse communities far beyond their origins.
Valentine’s adoration, Gupta points out, 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 across the Christian world, regardless of its internal schisms. Similarly, Basavanna is not just revered by Lingayats; his statue stands in India’s Parliament House in Delhi and by the Thames River in London. His message of social equality and human unity resonates far beyond the boundaries of any single sect.
The Institutionalization of Sainthood
One of the most interesting aspects of Gupta’s essay is his reflection on how saints are made. Neither Valentine nor Basavanna was immediately hailed as a saint. In both cases, it took centuries for their reputations to be established.
Valentine died in the 3rd century, but his feast day was not established until 496. The intervening two centuries saw the transformation of Christianity from a persecuted sect to the official religion of the Roman Empire. The church, now in power, could afford to honour those who had defied power in the name of faith.
Basavanna’s posthumous recognition followed a similar arc. The orthodox forces that had influenced King Bijjala ensured that he received no attention in his immediate aftermath. But his disciples preserved his vachanas, passing them down through generations. Over two to three centuries, these poems were collected and compiled, gradually building Basavanna’s reputation. The man who had been cast out as a political rebel was slowly transformed into a revered saint and reformer.
This delayed recognition speaks to something important about the nature of sainthood. Saints are not created by official decree alone; they are made by the enduring power of their message, kept alive by communities of believers across generations. The fact that both Valentine and Basavanna eventually achieved sainthood is testimony to the resonance of what they stood for.
The Challenge of Organized Religion
Gupta’s essay also contains a implicit critique of organized religion. “Organized religion may take another route and end up in sectarian bigotry,” he writes, “but Valentine and Basavanna remind us to not forget the basis of what it is to be human.”
This is a crucial insight. The institutions that grow up around religious traditions often become invested in maintaining boundaries, enforcing orthodoxy, and wielding power. They can easily lose sight of the core message of love and compassion that gave birth to the tradition in the first place. The history of both Christianity and Hinduism is filled with examples of such institutional capture—moments when the custodians of religion became its greatest betrayers.
Saints like Valentine and Basavanna serve as correctives. They remind us that religion, at its best, is about breaking down barriers, not building them up. It is about love—love that transcends the commands of emperors, love that breaches the walls of caste, love that unites us across all the divisions we create.
Conclusion: Broadening Our Valentine’s Day
Gupta’s proposal—that Valentine’s Day could equally be Basavanna’s Day—is not about renaming a holiday. It is about broadening our understanding of what we celebrate. Valentine’s Day need not be confined to romantic love between couples. It can be an occasion to reflect on love in all its forms: the love that defies injustice, the love that challenges hierarchy, the love that unites humanity across all barriers.
Basavanna’s vachanas are full of this expansive vision of love. In one famous verse, he writes: “The rich will make temples for Shiva. What shall I, a poor man, do? My legs are pillars, my body the shrine, my head the golden dome. Listen, O Lord of the meeting rivers, things standing shall fall, but the moving ever shall stay.” This is love that finds the divine not in stone structures but in the living human body, in the dignity of every person regardless of wealth or caste.
Valentine, too, represents this kind of love—love that defies power, that risks everything for the sake of human connection. Both saints lived to fight for the same cause. Both suffered at the hands of the powers of their day. Both live with greater vigour in our times.
To honour them, as Gupta says, we must accept their message in its true and enlarged form. We must remember that love is not just about candlelit dinners and heart-shaped chocolates. It is about the courage to stand up against injustice, the compassion to reach across boundaries, and the faith that human connection is worth fighting for.
That is a message worth celebrating, on February 14 and every day.
Q&A: Unpacking the Parallel Between Valentine and Basavanna
Q1: What is the central parallel Dipankar Gupta draws between St. Valentine and Basavanna?
A: Gupta draws a parallel between the two saints based on their defiance of royal authority in the name of love. Valentine defied Emperor Claudius II’s edict forbidding soldiers to marry and secretly performed weddings, for which he was imprisoned and executed. Basavanna defied King Bijjala II by performing inter-caste marriages, challenging the ritual hierarchy of his time, for which he was persecuted and forced into exile. Both men suffered for their convictions, both were posthumously recognized as saints, and both symbolize love as a force that transcends social and political boundaries.
Q2: Why does Gupta argue that Valentine’s Day could also be Basavanna’s Day?
A: Gupta argues that both saints fought for the same cause: the right of individuals to unite in love against unjust authority. Valentine’s defiance was against an imperial edict; Basavanna’s was against the caste system. Both messages are about love as a unifying human principle. By broadening Valentine’s Day to include Basavanna, Gupta suggests we can move beyond a narrow focus on romantic love and celebrate love in all its forms—including the love that challenges oppression and breaches social barriers.
Q3: What were Basavanna’s vachanas, and why are they significant?
A: Vachanas are short, powerful poems in Kannada composed by Basavanna and other poets of the 12th-century Lingayat movement. They expound a philosophy of devotion (bhakti) to Shiva, reject ritualism and priestly mediation, and advocate the equality of all human beings regardless of caste. The vachanas are significant because they represent a radical social and religious critique, and because they were preserved and compiled by generations of disciples, gradually establishing Basavanna’s reputation as a saint and reformer over 200-300 years after his death.
Q4: How does Gupta contrast “organized religion” with the message of saints like Valentine and Basavanna?
A: Gupta suggests that organized religion often “takes another route” and ends up in “sectarian bigotry”—focusing on boundaries, orthodoxy, and institutional power. Saints like Valentine and Basavanna, by contrast, remind us of “the basis of what it is to be human.” They represent a vision of religion centered on love, compassion, and human connection, which can be lost when institutions become more concerned with maintaining their own authority than with the core message of the faith.
Q5: What is the broader lesson Gupta hopes readers will take from this comparison?
A: The broader lesson is that love should not be confined to private, romantic expression. It is a public principle with revolutionary implications. Both Valentine and Basavanna demonstrate that love can be a force for social change—challenging unjust laws, breaching caste barriers, and uniting humanity across divisions. Gupta hopes that by honouring both saints, we will “accept their message in its true and enlarged form” and recognize that the ties of affection that unify us are more important than the boundaries that divide us.
