Maate Mahadevi

{{Infobox person | name = Maate Mahadevi | birth_date = {{birth date|df=y|1946|3|13}} | birth_place = Sasalahatti,
Chitradurga | death_date = {{death date and age|2019|3|14|1946|3|13|df=yes}} | death_place = Bangalore | education = Bachelor of Science
Master of Arts | nationality = Indian | parents = Basappa
(father)
Gangamma
(mother) }} Dr Poojya Maate Mahadevi MA, B.Sc.(13 March 1946 – 14 March 2019{{Cite web|url=https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/150319/lingayat-seer-jagadguru-mate-mahadevi-is-dead.html|title = Lingayat seer Jagadguru Mate Mahadevi is dead|date = 15 March 2019}}) was an Indian Spiritual leader, scholar, mystic, writer and first female Jagadguru, spiritual head of the Indian Lingayat community.{{cite book |author=Werner, Karel |title=The Yogi and the mystic: studies in Indian and comparative mysticism |publisher=Curzon |location=Surrey |year=1989 |isbn=0-7007-0272-5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=p7J-Gy7PSSEC&q=Mate+Mahadevi}}{{cite journal|date=July–December 2009|title=The Contemporary Hindu Women of India: An Overview|journal=South Asian Studies: A Research Journal of South Asian Studies|volume=24|issue=2|pages=242–249|url=http://pu.edu.pk/csas/journal/PDF/5-Dr.%20Tahira.pdf|author=Tahira Basharat}}

Early life

Following initiation in 1965 by Lingananda Swami, Maate Mahadevi began writing vachanas, a form of didactic poetry. In 1966 she received her Jangama initiation as an ascetic in the Lingayat order of wandering mendicants. In 1970 she was installed as a jagadguru in the Lingayat community, the first time a woman had been placed in that position. She held the 12th century woman poet Akka Mahadevi, who also wrote vachanas, as her role model.{{cite book |author=Sharma, Arvind| author2=Young, Katherine K. |title=Feminism and World Religions |publisher=SUNY Press |location=New York |year=1999 |pages=45–46 |isbn=0-7914-4024-9|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Fkay_WoTdHcC}}[http://www.lingayathism.net/html/modules/cjaycontent/index.php?id=83 Lingayathism website] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100809153539/http://www.lingayathism.net/html/modules/cjaycontent/index.php?id=83 |date=2010-08-09 }}

By 1983 she had published twenty books and started an educational and religious institution called Jaganmata Akka Mahadevi Ashrama in Dharwad, Karnataka, whose focus is education and spiritual upliftment of girls and women. Among her many books is Basava Tatva Darshana, on the life and teachings of Basava, a 12th-century social reformer and philosopher who fought against the caste system.