Jain Community Research Articles

Jains in Switzerland

Abstract There are 120 Jains living in Switzerland today. Desiring to exchange information about their religion and to expand their knowledge, they started to meet in 2008. This initiated a community-building process in which Jains of different branches took part. Such a process, as well as the diaspora situation itself, is always connected with negotiations and religious transformations, which is also evident in the Swiss context. Following the common meetings, a distinct form of Jainism was created in Switzerland. This new form is supradenominational and universal and based on aspects such as vegetarianism, environmentalism, and nonviolence. Additionally, the Swiss Jains developed new strategies of knowledge transfer. This article focuses on not only the formation of a Swiss Jain community but also its dissolution as no common gatherings have taken place since 2016. Therefore, factors are named that can lead to the dissolution of a community.

Writing History and Jain Literary Production in Early Modern South Asia

This article focuses on the social existence of the Jain community, as exhibited in literary production in early modern India. The existing historiography sometimes tends to make Jain epistemology subservient to contemporary political culture. One must be cautious in approaching the tension between identitarian stability and identitarian volatility and between social textures and cultural mobility beyond the binarities of literary cultures and mundane survival with reference to our existing knowledge of Jainology. The volatile world of religiosity in early modern India tended to shape circumstances that both enforced and drew upon polemical meanings arising out of hybrid identities and cultural intermediacy. Therein lie diverse and multiple possibilities of literary discourse on the multiple religious identities at the core of the histories of Jainism in early modern South Asia.

The Burden of Obesity and Hypertension Among a Vegetarian Ethnic Minority Community: A Study Among Jain's of Madhya Pradesh, India

Introduction: The prevalence of obesity is increasing among children and adults worldwide. Obesity is one of the major risk factors for hypertension. Thus, the study aimed to document the prevalence of obesity, hypertension and their association with each other among the Jain community of Khurai town, Sagar District (Madhya Pradesh), India. Methods: Data was collected on 175 participants belonging to the age group of 20-59 years. Anthropometric measurements were taken and indices were calculated such as Body mass index, waist-hip ratio, and waist-height ratio to assess general and abdominal obesity. Blood pressure was recorded using a sphygmomanometer. Results: The prevalence of overweight and obesity was found 25.71 percent and 9.71 percent. Whereas, 54.28 percent and 48.14 percent of participants were at risk for central obesity. The prevalence of hypertension was 41.14 percent. Obesity and hypertension were more prevalent among males, females were more overweight. Hypertension had a significant (p-value <0.01) positive correlation with anthropometric indices. Body Mass Index imposed highest significant increase risk (p-value <0.05) on hypertension. Conclusion: Jain adults had a high prevalence of overweight/obesity and hypertension despite of being vegetarian community. Therefore, more attention should be directed towards this community for the prevention, management, and treatment of non-communicable diseases.

<i>Sallekhana </i>and the End-of-Life Option of Voluntary Stopping of Eating and Drinking

This article brings sallekhana, the Jain practice of fasting to death, into conversation with the practice of ‘voluntary stopping of eating and drinking’ (VSED), an end-of-life option, available in various countries for competent adults, to hasten the end of life by consciously choosing to not eat and drink. From a medical and legal point of view sallekhana can be considered a form of VSED. Although differing in terms of intent and historical context, the two practices are similar insofar that they relate to capable and sound individuals who voluntarily forego food and water until death. Showing the critical similarity between VSED and sallekhana, I argue that the grounds put forward by major medical associations and legal societies to differentiate VSED from suicide are equally applicable to the case of sallekhana. I contend that the Jain fast needs to be disentangled from the concept of suicide based on the quality of intent, but also because the process is, in theory and for some time at least, reversible, supported by loved ones and members of the larger Jain community, and dependent on the individual’s continuous and prolonged will of renouncing food and water. I also show how medical and legal authorities defend an individual’s right to VSED based on the principles of self-determination, bodily integrity, self-ownership, and respect for persons. I put forward the view to take these ethical principles into account to legally protect a Jain’s right to take the vow of sallekhana.

Conflict in Tourism: Parasnath

Land is precious, scarce and limited. It represents territoriality or the extents of anyone’s power. The conflict among individuals and among neighboring nations is because of the land dispute. Parasnath hills are in Giridih district of Jharkhand state in India. The Jain community had built temples and tonks on the hills and is among the most pious pilgrimage sites for them. The hills are Wildlife Sanctuaries’, and a tourism development proposal was in pipeline. The Jain community opposed the move citing the reason of their religious reservations. Jain community refrain from liquor and are pure vegetarian for their food choice. Meanwhile the aboriginal community (Adivasis) too claimed over the hills of Parasnath. This paper examines the triangular conflict on the hills of Parasnath and suggests the measures for conflict resolution.

Vernacularizing Jainism

This article argues that the religious and social developments of seventeenth-century Jain communities in northern India can be characterized as vernacularization. This is a process in which religious expression turns towards the quotidian, the local and the practical, and is strongly intertwined with vernacular literature and art. The article makes its argument by discussing the Dharmapariksa-bhasa by the Digambara author Manohardas (seventeenth century). This so-far unstudied text is an Old Hindi version of Amitagati’s Sanskrit Dharmapariksa (eleventh century) which criticizes by means of comical narration Brahmanical myths and beliefs. Presenting selections from this text, the article will highlight the intricate ways by which Manohardas’s bhasa reframes the Dharmapariksa to express the complexity that is vernacular Jainism. This involves emphasizing the spiritual-mystical interpretation of Jainism that was in vogue, but also drawing attention to the religious praxis of Jains and their others. The transposition into the northern Indian vernacular idiom suggests the role literary language played in vernacularizing Jainism. The discussions in the article present a Jainism that, while reflecting on its own tradition, defines itself in terms of the everyday regional religious environment of northern India.

An overview of Sherawali Jain community in Azimganj and Jiaganj cities in post-independence era

This research provides a historical perspective on Sherawali Jain community in Azimganj and Jiaganj in post-independent era. Based on a comprehensive analysis of primary and secondary sources, the study reveals that contribution to the local economy in those cities. The study also highlights about Jain culture, other community development program, including the education, religious devotion and their cuisine. Also a brief account of the migration of Sherawali Jain. The study also highlights problems faced by Sherawali Jains after independence.

Jain Life Reimagined: An Examination of Jain Practice and Discourse during the Covid-19 Pandemic

This article analyzes the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the religious practices and the public discourse of Jains in the U.S.A. and India. On the institutional level, I show how Jain organizations made extensive efforts to connect digitally with their community members when collective, in-person celebrations and temple visits were either reduced in number, limited in capacity, or cancelled because of the pandemic. Given the new importance of Jain online platforms, I address their potential role in both blurring sectarian boundaries and creating authentic sacred spaces. On the individual level, I examine the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the everyday religious practices of Jains. I conducted eight semi-structured interviews over Zoom between November 2020 and January 2021. I argue that while there is a great diversity of individual Jain responses, a common feature appears to be a significant increase of Jains participating in scholarly religious activities. In terms of the ways in which Jains talk, write, and reflect on the COVID-19 pandemic, I theorize that the Jain discourse on the COVID-19 pandemic is characterized by environmental concerns and by the processes of scientization and universalization. Building on the work of Knut Aukland (2016) that examines the role of science in contemporary Jain discussions, I define scientization as the ongoing process where Jains underline the convergence of their religion with modern science. With the term universalization, I refer to the noticeable trend among Jains to argue for the need to teach Jainism beyond the Jain community by showing its contemporary relevance and applicability to overcome global problems, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Encounters of Indic-Abrahamic Religions with Matriliny in Premodern Southern India


 This article engages with the matrilineal communities of the Indian Ocean littoral with a focus on the southern Indian context. The matrilineal system was one of the most convenient features in the context of the Indian Ocean trade. In their transregional journeys, maritime itinerants stayed in one place for months or even a year, depending on the variations in monsoon. During this period, they married into the local communities. These marriages were enabled through the existing matrilineal practices, in which men could and should come and go while the women stayed at home and owned the property. From Southeast Asia to Southeast Africa, the matrilineal system has been prevalent in several Islamic communities, but in southern India it historically existed among Hindus and Muslims, and to some extent among Jews and Christians, too. Although the adherence to the system varied historically, we can observe certain features shared among the communities. On the basis of fragmentary but significant evidence between ca. 800 and 1800 CE among Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities, I explore the nuances of conversion and incommensurability across religions. I investigate how the system benefited the oceanic mercantile culture in the region as well as the dispersal of Abrahamic religions, which are often interpreted as significant domains of patriarchy and patriliny.

Jain Memory of the Tughluq Sultans: Alternative Sources for the Historiography of Sultanate India

AbstractSome of the earliest narratives of meetings between leaders of an Indian community and their Muslim ruler appear in the Vividhatīrthakalpa (Chapters on Many Sacred Places) of the Jain monk Jinaprabhasūri (c. 1261–1333 ce). The text depicts the monk's relationship with Sultan Muḥammad bin Tughluq (r. 1325–51) in the years 1328–33, which resulted in the sovereign issuing a number of edicts (farmāns) to protect Jains and Jain temples and which led to the return of a Jina icon (Pkt. paḍima, Skt. pratimā) and the establishment of a Jain quarter in Delhi. Over the next two-and-a-half centuries, Jinaprabhasūri's story would be retold several times, with fifteenth-century narrators shifting his interlocutor to Fīrūz Shāh Tughluq (r. 1351–88). In the process of making Jinaprabha an object of memory, Jain authors of both the monk's own and rival monastic orders (gacchas) depicted the sultans as benefactors of the Jain community. While these narratives were attempts to delineate the proper relationship between Jain monastic leaders and Muslim rulers, they also constituted a Jain memory of the Tughluq sultans that is often at odds with modern historical representations of them. Reading these narratives alongside other evidence of Jains’ relations with the Tughluqs offers historians an alternative view of these figures and their relations with their Indian subjects, helping to de-centre modern historical narratives based on selective readings of Persian and Arabic sources and a privileging of Brahmanical or colonial viewpoints of the period. However, these narratives require historians to theorise this ‘memory’ to understand them productively as historical sources.

Renegotiating Sectarian Space through the Realia and Monasteries of Early Medieval Bengal

AbstractThis article considers the practices about ‘the special dead’ related to the monastery at Pāhāṛpur (‘Hill--town’) in the Rājshāhī region of North--Western Bangladesh. This Early Medieval community was rich in religious diversity from the Gupta to Pāla periods—dense with evidence of Jain, Hindu, and Buddhist activity. There are a number of stūpa structures throughout the grounds for the burial of revered teachers and leaders such that the living comingled with the dead in an academic and religious setting. The Pāla era monastery was dedicated to advanced learning, meditation, worship, student housing, and burial. At the centre of the monastery is a large stūpa that has been celebrated widely for its diverse imagery in the form of terracotta plaques and relief sculptures with Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain themes. This article focuses on the reception history of this site and especially on its unique role as a mediator of religious voices from the region’s past. Under Dharmapāla, the site became branded as Buddhist as part of a broader imperial effort to promote Buddhist networks. Locally, however, the site maintained and promoted relationships to Hindu and Jain communities as well as Buddhist ones. Its endurance as a sacred site through complex interreligious permutations is intriguing though not surprising. Death and learning were not separated. Evidence from Pāhāṛpur raises questions about the communities who lived there as well as our understanding of their approach to death in practice in the Bengal region.

Life Satisfaction among Married Working Women and Married Non-Working Women in the Jain Community

With the increase in profound changes in the lives of Indian Women, fulfilling the various degrees of roles in their life from maintaining their family, job, domestic help, business, looking after the traditions and various other domains or life facets has had an impact on their psychological well-being, quality of life and life satisfaction. However, when it comes to Jain community, women are bounded by a lot of cultural and religious factors affecting their overall satisfaction in life. Hence, it becomes essential to identify how life satisfaction differs among women with a job profile and one without it. The aim of the present study is to examine the difference on life satisfaction among married working and non-working women belonging in the Jain Community. The present study consisted of 55 participants (30- married working women & 25- married non-working women) belonged to the age range of 23- 39 years and had a minimum of marriage and work experience of at least 1 year. Participants belonged from Tier-1 cities of India namely, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, and Ahmadabad. Data was collected through administration of Life Satisfaction Scale, through offline mediums. Results indicate that, there is no significant difference on life satisfaction among married working and non- working women belonging in the Jain Community.

Ascetics and/or laypeople: Jain view on humam status in the world

The article examines the ethical system of Jainism on the example of the lifestyle of ascetic monks and lay householders. The disciplinary rules for lay followers (both Digambara and Śvetāmbara branches of Jainism) are fixed in the texts of the śrāvakācāra genre compiled by ascetics. This reflects the hierarchical distribution of “roles” within the Jain community. Ascetics represent the most advanced part of the community on the spiritual Path of Liberation, while lay people have only just entered this path. The author focuses on the fact that in Jainism monasticism is considered as a spiritually higher stage, and not just a different (but equally significant) way of salvation. Only monks of certain ranks have the right to preach publicly, interpret the Scriptures, and instruct the laity. Householders can only do this in the absence of monks. At the same time, ascetics are almost completely dependent on the laity for their everyday life, since householders are obliged to provide them with everything necessary for life. The introduction of an intermediate, quasi-monastic way of life in the form of the bhaṭṭārakas (Digambra) and śrīpūjya (Śvetāmbra) in the middle ages allowed the Jain community to survive and even have a direct impact on the political and economic situation in various regions of India. The author emphasizes that written in all-India paradigm of the life regulations (artha, kāma, dharma and mokṣa), Jain system of domestic rituals, coupled with the practice of vows and limitations focused on training of householders to move towards self-improvement and eventually achieve the main religious goal – realization the nature of one’s own soul.

Jayati Bhagavāñ Jinendraḥ!


 
 
 In the fifth–sixth century CE the rulers of the Kadamba dynasty claimed the town of Halsi (ancient Palāśikā) in modern Karnataka as the northern capital of their expanding polity. Their investments in this locale are recorded in a corpus of copper-plate inscriptions spanning four generation of kings. The plates record the growth of a thriving Jain community at Palāśikā and are revelatory of their relationships with the Kadamba rulers and their agents. This study of the donative and political processes converging in Palāśikā shows that the use of Sanskrit inscriptions as media for royal representation and public self-fashioning was highly developed in the Kadamba polity, where idioms and trends developed independent of the Gupta royal model. Moreover, the evidence from Halsi is indicative of the centrality of Jain religious communities, ideologies, and institutions in the administration of the Kadamba polity and the expression of a lineage identity.
 
 

Jainism in Danger? Temple entry and the rhetoric of religion and reform in post-colonial India

AbstractA bitter debate broke out in the Digambar Jain community in the middle of the twentieth century following the passage of the Bombay Harijan Temple Entry Act in 1947, which continued until well after the promulgation of the Untouchability (Offences) Act 1955. These laws included Jains in the definition of ‘Hindu’, and thus threw open the doors of Jain temples to formerly Untouchable castes. In the eyes of its Jain opponents, this was a frontal and terrible assault on the integrity and sanctity of the Jain dharma. Those who called themselves reformists, on the other hand, insisted on the closeness between Jainism and Hinduism. Temple entry laws and the public debates over caste became occasions for the Jains not only to examine their distance—or closeness—to Hinduism, but also the relationship between their community and the state, which came to be imagined as predominantly Hindu. This article, by focusing on the Jains and this forgotten episode, hopes to illuminate the civilizational categories underlying state practices and the fraught relationship between nationalism and minorities.

Vulnerability, Transcendence, and the Body: Exploring the Human/Nonhuman Animal Divide within Jainism

Abstract Jainism’s renowned compassion toward nonhuman animals is derived from the vulnerability and finitude we share with them. The tradition recognizes the impetus to avoid suffering and preserve life as basic to all living beings and emphasizes our shared existential condition. Nevertheless, Jainism treats the condition of being human as privileged because of its capacity for radical bodily detachment. This article, based on long-term ethnographic work among Jain communities in India, brings Jainism’s traditional understandings of the human/nonhuman distinction into discussion with contemporary philosophical and anthropological reflections on the category of the “animal.”

The Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019: A Religion Based Pathway to Indian Citizenship

The passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019,(Act) has India’s secular values under scrutiny as the Act has created an ever-narrowing Indian pathway to citizenship. This amendment is seen as the first legal provision that begins to make India a homeland for Hindus. The Act grants Indian citizenship to persons belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities on grounds of religious persecution in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. The bill grants these specific groups to be granted citizenship if they have arrived in India before December 14, 2014. Furthermore, the CAA gives an expedited path to citizenship to these groups of people who belong to the particular religion required by the CAA. Leaving out Muslims in this Act makes it discriminatory and puts India's seculars values at risk. In Part I, this article will analyze the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 and its specific provisions. Part II and Part III will explore the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 under both International Human Rights Law and the Law of India. In Part IV, this article will explore the Citizenship Amendment Act in the context of Indian history and politics. Part V will explore various proposals to be considered in this situation.

‘Examining Religion’ through Generations of Jain Audiences: The Circulation of the Dharmaparīkṣā

Indian literary traditions, both religious and non-religious, have dealt with literature in a fluid way, repeating and reusing narrative motifs, stories and characters over and over again. In recognition of this, the current paper will focus on one particular textual tradition within Jainism of works titled Dharmaparīkṣā and will trace its circulation. This didactic narrative, designed to convince a Jain audience of the correctness of Jainism over other traditions, was first composed in the tenth century in Apabhraṃśa and is best known in its eleventh-century Sanskrit version by the Digambara author Amitagati. Tracing it from a tenth-century context into modernity, across both classical and vernacular languages, will demonstrate the popularity of this narrative genre within Jain circles. The paper will focus on the materiality of manuscripts, looking at language and form, place of preservation, affiliation of the authors and/or scribe, and patronage. Next to highlighting a previously underestimated category of texts, such a historical overview of a particular literary circulation will prove illuminating on broader levels: it will show networks of transmission within the Jain community, illustrate different types of mediation of one literary tradition, and overall, enrich our knowledge of Jain literary culture.

Roots, Routes, and Routers: Social and Digital Dynamics in the Jain Diaspora

In the past three decades, Jains living in diaspora have been instrumental in the digital boom of Jainism-related websites, social media accounts, and mobile applications. Arguably, the increased availability and pervasive use of different kinds of digital media impacts how individuals deal with their roots; for example, it allows for greater contact with family and friends, but also with religious figures, back in India. It also impacts upon routes—for example, it provides new ways for individual Jains to find each other, organize, coordinate, and put down roots in their current country of residence. Using extensive corpora of Jainism-related websites and mobile applications (2013–2018), as well as ethnographic data derived from participant observation, interviews, and focus groups conducted in the United States, United Kingdom, and Belgian Jain communities (2014–2017), this article examines patterns of use of digital media for social and religious purposes by Jain individuals and investigates media strategies adopted by Jain diasporic organizations. It attempts to explain commonalities and differences in digital engagement across different geographic locations by looking at differences in migration history and the layout of the local Jain communities.

Bioethics and Jainism: From Ahiṃsā to an Applied Ethics of Carefulness

Although Jainism has been largely absent from discourses in bioethics and religion, its rich account of life, nonviolence, and contextual ethical response has much to offer the discussion within and beyond the Jain community. In this essay, I explore three possible reasons for this discursive absence, followed by an analysis of medical treatment in the Jain tradition—from rare accommodations in canonical texts to increasing acceptance in the post-canonical period, up to the present. I argue that the nonviolent restraint required by the ideal of ahiṃsā is accompanied by applied tools of carefulness (apramatta) that enable the evolution of medicine. These applied tools are derived from the earliest canonical strata and offer a distinct contribution to current bioethical discourses, demanding a more robust account of: (1) pervasive life forms; (2) desires and motivations; (3) direct and indirect modes of harm; and (4) efforts to reduce harm in one’s given context. I conclude by examining these tools of carefulness briefly in light of contemporary Jain attitudes toward reproductive ethics, such as abortion and in vitro fertilization.