History of the Sangha

A district left behind

Before Independence, Ballari was one district of twenty taluks in the vast Madras Presidency, far from Madras and easily neglected. Its taluks were redrawn again and again, its schools were few, and for a century and a half the region was known simply as the “backward districts”. Kannada was spoken at home, Telugu was taught in school and Tamil was the language of administration.

District and taluk boards offered a little schooling on token grants, and the missions offered theirs. The elders of the Veerasaiva community saw that poverty, illiteracy and unemployment fed one another, and that education was the remedy for all three. They took the burden on themselves.

1909 to 1918: an idea becomes a society

The idea was put before the fifth convention of the All India Veerasaiva Mahasabha, held in Ballari from 27 to 30 December 1909. It took shape in 1912 and came to life in 1916, with the blessings and guidance of Sri Hanagal Kumaraswamiji and Jagadguru Sri Siddhalinga Shivacharya Swamiji of Ujjaini. A committee of five office bearers and twenty members was formed.

In August 1916 the work began at the historic Sakkari Karadeppa Chowki with a Vidyarthigala Vishranthi Nilaya, a rest house for students, under the Presidentship of Sri Kowthal Gurushanthappa, with Sri Heerada Karibasappa as the first Secretary. On 7 March 1918 the society was formally registered as the Madras Veerasaiva Vidyavardhaka Sangha, with Sri Togari Veeramallappa as Vice-President. With his help the free hostel later moved to Gandhi Nagar, where the head office stands today. When the district joined Mysore State the name became Veerasaiva Vidyavardhaka Sangha, Ballari.

For a community to come together and found a private society for education, to meet a need the government could not, was a first in the history of the Madras Presidency. From the start the Sangha set itself six tasks: education in Kannada, the education of women, primary education, high school and higher education, education in rural areas, and technical education. It adopted secular values and a non-commercial, selfless attitude.

Akshara and Anna

The founders spoke of two gifts, akshara and anna: letters and food. A child from a village could not study in town without somewhere to sleep and something to eat, so the Sangha's first institution was a free hostel, open to children of every community. Its first school followed on 8 April 1924: Heerada Sugamma Kannada Primary School, in a district that had Telugu-medium schools and not one in Kannada. That school is counted among the reasons Ballari is part of Karnataka today.

The first college in the district

There was no college anywhere in the district. The affluent sent their children elsewhere; the poor could not. At its silver jubilee in 1942 the Sangha opened Setra Gurushanthappa High School, the district's first Kannada-medium high school under private management, made possible when Setra Mariyamma gave her entire property, and it resolved to bring higher education to Ballari.

A college needed three lakh rupees, a hundred acres and a building. Through the efforts of Rao Bahadur Y. Mahabaleswarappa, the generosity of countless donors and the sympathy of Dr. Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar, Vice-Chancellor of Madras University, Veerasaiva College opened in 1945. By 1956 it stood on 101 acres granted by the Government.

Into the taluks

For four decades grants were scarce, regulations impractical and the department unhelpful. From the 1960s, under the Presidentship of Sri Allum Karibasappa with Sri N. Thippanna as Secretary, and with the energy of Principal D. Mariyappa of Veerasaiva College, the Sangha grew quickly, and always towards the places least able to pay for it: Vijayanagar College at Hosapete, Kottureshwara College at Kottur, Gangavathi Bhagyamma Rural College at Huvinahadagali and Ambli Dodda Bharamappa College at Harapanahalli. High schools at Kudithini, Tambrahalli and Munirabad grew into junior colleges, each built on the gifts of local people.

In 1969, with one lakh rupees given by Sri Allum Karibasappa, came Smt. Allum Sumangalamma Memorial College for Women, with a hostel beside it, and later Kittur Rani Chennamma High School for girls.

Professional and postgraduate education

Teacher education, law and pharmacy followed, and in 1980 an engineering college, since named after Rao Bahadur Y. Mahabaleswarappa. A second engineering college opened at Hosapete, then a polytechnic, and an institute of management named after Sri Allum Karibasappa. The degree colleges added postgraduate courses one after another, the pharmacy college its Pharm.D., and the engineering college its M.Tech., MBA and MCA.

A child can now enter one of the Sangha's kindergartens and leave with a postgraduate degree without once going outside its institutions. In 2016 the Sangha completed one hundred years and celebrated its Shatamanotsava.