Dr. Surendra Singhvi
[HN4U Editor's Note:
This article was written 1993 - many facts are therefore just not up-to-date.
Misspellings (there are still a lot of scan errors) will be edited soon.
Sorry for your inconvenience.]
Jain Radiance On The Western Horizon
In this paper we attempt to sketch what became known (and what) to well-educated, non-specialist Western readers and hearers concerning the Jain religion, ideas and ways of life, from the time when Mr. Virchand Raghavaji Gandhi addressed the Chicago Parliament of the world Religions in 1893 to the present. We also take a look at the century before that event and then we seek to peer into the hundred years ahead of us[1]. Definitions. “Jainism” is a hybrid word, which implies it is something like “Protestantism” or “Marxism”. This can be inaccurate and misleading. It can but does not always, necessarily, include what we mean by the Jain Dharma, the Jain Faith, doctrines and way of life. It can include the life of the Jains as a community or group. It can include their thinking, writings, behaviour, their art, drama, sculpture, spirituality, and much else. Often we use it to mean only one of these things. It is best left in the large and loose sense, demanding that readers be alert and use their critical powers to work with us towards more accurate meaning and understanding. We also wish at the beginning to make it clear that since Jainism basically and ultimately represents the primordial reasoning religion of all humanity, we do not wish to imply its principles were utterly unknown in the west before the arrival of Jain people. Certainly a number of native Americans had found their way to being victorious over themselves and living at peace and harmony with one another and with nature. A good deal of literary information about Jainism had already reached North America and was known to a number of well - read scholars, businesspersons, missionaries and ministers of religion.
Perhaps we should define this group of knowledgeable once more. They lived “in the West” as mysterious and undefined as “The East”, “The Orient” “The lands of the setting sun” to translate the German phrase. To tell our story we must include to some extent Europe, chiefly Britain, France and Germany, though Italy and indeed Russia played a part. “The uttermost part of the West” as the early Christian mothers and fathers spoke of it, was Spain. “The west” meant to early Americans anything west of the Mississippi. May we use it as another bucket - word to mean the Occident (from European Russia to California?) Also as time went on many users of English in India must be included. The knower we are speaking of were highly educated people using academic English. A good number were able to read German and French, and manage some classical Greek and academic Latin. It looks as if by the 1870’s a book published by a top class academic Press in England was available in Germany, France and New England within a year and reciprocally from U.S.A. to Britain, France and Germany. Even in the early nineteenth century material published in India filtered back into Britain fairly quickly if it had government or missionary relevance. It also reached New England remarkably quickly if it were connected with the American Mission in Bombay and Gujarat. The whole process has yet to be carefully researched, at this stage what we say about this inter-communication must remain somewhat speculative.
[01] The World’s Parliament of Religions
So we start our history with Shri Virchand R. Gandhi and take his coming to Chicago in 1883 as the beginning of our era.[2] We will then go back into the century before V.R.G. and then come to the century after. The great Columbian Exhibition of 1892 met with much trumpeting of material achievement, much talk of the conquest of the west and the domination of nature. A hundred years later we shudder at the brash, suicidal shortsightedness and headless, needless cruelty and destruction. Anyhow, one good thing came out of it all, almost a tailpiece, an afterthought. A follower of Sweden Borg, a Presbyterian and a Unitarian minister, then other Christians including the Roman Catholics and Orthodoxes came together to plan a parliament of religions. Members of other religions were invited to meet on equal terms of welcome. To World’s Parliament of Religions has been acclaimed as equal to if not greater than Ashoka’s Council at Pataliputra, Constantine’s at Nicaea or Akbar’s meetings at Fatehpur Sikri. At its seventeen days of plenary meetings, contemporaries gave the palm to Swami Vivekananda. Admiration for his attainment does not prevent our acclamation of an unflamboyant personality, soberly presenting a faith based on reason and self-conquest. This was the faithful achievement of Mr. V.R. Gandhi.