Shaivism's internal range is wider than that of any other Hindu stream, and its schools disagree about the most basic question in the tradition: whether the soul is finally distinct from Shiva or identical with him.
Shaiva Siddhanta, the great tradition of the Tamil south, is dualist. Shiva, souls and bondage are three eternal realities, and liberation is the soul's release into likeness with God rather than absorption into him. It is worked out in the Shaiva Agamas and sung in the Tirumurai, the Tamil hymns of the Nayanar saints from the seventh century onward.
Kashmir Shaivism, or Trika, is its opposite. Everything whatever is the play of a single divine consciousness, and bondage is a contraction of that consciousness rather than a substance added to it. It produced, in Abhinavagupta around the year 1000, one of the most formidable bodies of philosophical work in Indian history.
Between and around them stand the Nath yogis, to whom the hatha yoga tradition traces itself; the Kapalikas and other tantric ascetics; and the Lingayats or Virashaivas, who wear the linga on the body and reject temple priesthood, caste and image worship. The Lingayats are usually credited to Basava in twelfth-century Karnataka, though whether he founded the movement or revived something older is disputed, and that dispute is entangled with the modern division between Lingayat and Veerashaiva identity.
The question became a political one. In August 2017 a rally in Karnataka demanding recognition of Lingayatism as a religion separate from Hinduism drew close to two hundred thousand people. In March 2018 a state committee recommended the status and the Karnataka government approved the recommendation. The central government refused it. The matter is unresolved.