Hardekar Manjappa

Hardekar Manjappa (Kn:ಹರ್ಡೇಕರ ಮಂಜಪ್ಪ) (1886–1947), Manjappa was born in a poor family of Banavasi, village of Uttara Kannada district. He studied in nearby town of Sirsi and passed the Mulki (current primary education) final examination in 1903.^[1] He started his career as a teacher on a salary of seven rupees a month.

Movement

In the Swadeshi movement he and his brother were involved. The brothers knew Marathi and opened a weekly Dhanurdhari, (kn:’ಧನುರ್ಧಾರಿ’) on September 2, 1906 with more than 10,000 subscribers. He was slowly drawn to Saint-Reformist Basaveshwar's teachings. Basava's teachings were to eliminate casteism and a myriad evils & superstions connected with it. He wrote several booklets to bring out essential teachings of Basava & tried to bring out unity among his later day followers. In 1913 Started celebrating Basava Jayanti publicly.

He opened an ashram school in Almatti in 1927. He toured villages of North Karnataka to create awareness about Gandhiji’s constructive work. He had seen lot of similarities between teachings of Basaveshwar and Gandhi and the simple village folk could follow easily whatever Manjappaji spoke from public platform.

Later work

More than a thousand lectures he delivered on Satyagraha, patriotism, nationalism. In 1924 with the help of his team 'Basweshara Seva Dala' he organized Congress Party session in Belgaum. He had a leading role in the session and given a Book on Basaveshwara to Gandhi.He was a freedom fighter popularly known as Gandhi of Karnataka.^[2]

He has written more than 40 books including his autobiography. He died on 3 January 1947.^[3]

References