- Lived:
- c. 1130, Uḍutaḍi, a village near modern Shivamogga in Karnataka → the palace of a local king → the open road → Kalyāṇa (Basavakalyan), capital of the śaraṇa movement → died c. 1160 at Kadali, the banana-grove wilderness below the holy mountain of Śrīśaila (Srisailam, Andhra Pradesh), in her twenties or barely past them
- Field:
- Kannada saint-poet and mystic of the vachana movement — the boldest voice, male or female, of the Vīraśaiva (Lingayat) revolution
- The Big Idea:
- If God is the only real husband, then everything else — palace, marriage, clothing, gender, shame itself — is negotiable. She acted on that logic to the letter, walked out of all of it, and wrote the walk down.
- In their words:
- "I love the Beautiful One — no death, no decay, no form. He alone is my husband. Husbands who die, husbands who rot — carry them off and stuff them in your kitchen fire!" (a vachana, closely rendered)
- If you remember one thing:
- A hall full of India's most radical men cross-examined a naked woman on doctrine — and ended the session by naming her Akka, elder sister. The 350-odd poems she left behind are the most fearless things any Indian woman of the age put on record.