Dr. Noel Q. King
Another feature of Jaina studies has been the immense amount of epigraphical, inscriptional material available from over a period of some twenty-four centuries. Inscriptions from third century B.C. tell us of people we would not call Hindus, Jainas and Buddhists living together sharing a common India culture and way of life but each with its own distinctive characteristics. Then as we come on into the centuries of our era we find inscriptions from Jaina sources in many parts of the North and East and from Central and South India. There is continuity with the past and with one another. They are joining in the life of those around them and giving intellectual and cultural leadership as the centuries wear by. Suddenly Jaina inscriptions cease all at once in some areas where there formerly were many. We may suppose one cause may have been genocide and persecution at the hands of the politically dominant community. The inscriptions begin to be supplemented and collaborated by texts and after some centuries even by contemporary manuscripts, in a breathtaking abundance. A westerner must wonder whether even the Jews exceeded this small community in brilliance of innovative thinking, intellectual productivity and loyalty to their basic tradition in every age.
But let us turn back to yet another millennial year, 1097. Mahmud of Ghazni, a person of Turkic background, who called himself a Muslim, launched a series of invasions of India which went on for some seven hundred years. Very many Jainas perished and even more suffered loss of home and goods. Great centers of Jaina life and learnings were destroyed. One does not need to be an archaeologist to recognize Jaina materials in many a North Indian mosque. Many migrated, seeking security in inconspicuousness; some took refuge in desert parts of the land. It is a tribute to the Qur'anic teaching on other religions that some survived and prospered in the very eye of the tornado to our day. (Multan & Lahore till 1947, Delhi to the present). They survived, joined in the general life of the people, served in various ways of life and somehow managed to achieve great things. For example, under Khilji & Tugluq Sultans, who in some of their aspects were bloodthirsty, capricious mad-men, a Jaina had a key post in the Imperial Treasury and wrote scientific treatises. Again Jainas were among the architects of the prosperity and culture of Mughal India. That jewel, the Lal Mandira, was built in the same era as the Taj Mahal. No doubt it gave Aurangzeb something to think about every Friday morning when in residence in the Lal Qila he processed to the Juma Masjid.
Probably some Jainas conformed and in due time enriched Islam even as Theresa of Avila and John of the Cross, grandchildren of Jews, enriched Christianity. The strange feature is that we get no sign of armed or violent resistance, of protests or even of a theology of vicarious suffering. The upshot of this study which I am trying to summarize is to show that in every age for over 3,000 years, no matter what the challenge has been, the Jainas have maintained their self-being, integrity and constancy in their own distinctive stance and message. At the same time they have been willing to reach out and co-operate with the incoming or surrounding traditions however alien or indeed hostile those were. They have been willing to use the language and thought-forms of the day so as to play their part. Despite smallness in numbers and disadvantages of status, they have been able to bring benefit to all. They continued this achievement even under British imperial rule to which we now turn.
As one leafs through the pages of the Census of India, or the leading Indian English language newspapers of the day or some cases involving religion in the records of the High Courts, it is possible to gain some idea of the evolution of the self perception as well as the western concept of various groups. In some cases it is fairly easy to grasp an outline of Western views concerning for example, the Sikhs of the Punjab or the Khojas of Bombay, but the distinctive self-being, beauty and subtlety of style of the Jainas has been harder to pick out. The Jaina way in twentieth century British Indian politics is already hinted at by Mr. Virchand Gandhi during his stay in America. He does not bring up a direct confrontation with British policy in India but makes it clear that the British are enforcing economic policies and raising taxes in India without representation.
In an article published in the Boston periodical Arena. IX, 1895, pages 157-166.
The point would not be lost on the heirs of the revolution of 1777. The Jaina community took a full and "Loyal" part in the best of the educational humanitarian, philanthropic and development side of the British Empire, yet did not become sychophants, or compromise or betray its Indianness. Their relationship to the movement led by Mahatma Gandhi excellently illustrates some other points about them and their way of working.
The Mahatma was born in an area and into a family thoroughly permeated by Jaina thought. His great principle ahimsa (positive non-violence) and his practice of poverty and vegetarianism were intrinsic to Jainism and made their way thence into Hinduism and general Indian life. Jaina thought influenced his family, his education. Jaina support was with him throughout and contributed wholeheartedly to his achievement. Srimad Rajcandra, a Jaina, was his constant adviser and mentor, but the Jaina do not make may proprietary claims, their purpose is that humanity live the good life not to claim anything. Thus, to say the American Civil Rights and Anti-War movements owe a great deal through Mahatma Gandhi to Jainism is valuable for our American Education, but the Jainas are not prove to say such things for themselves. But one wonders how much else there is which we will never be able to pin down. For example, Mahatma Gandhi's spinning wheel is a monument to an appropriate technology movement which is sometimes internationally traced in part to the work of the Stevenson family in Gujarat.
But if we scrutinize the sources of the Stevenson's thinking we find they were deeply influenced by the Jainas amongst whom they lived and studied. As one struggles with old Jaina works on Mathematics, one wonders and the brain reels and begins to ask if it were not they who first thought of India's greatest gift to "Western" science the concept of myriads of numbers based on the symbol for nothing!
Jainism is an independent self-determining comprehensive system of civilization of high antiquity and attainment, to be compared in its own right with the Chinese, Islamic or Jewish achievements. Its intrinsic self-effacement should the more excite one's admiration, study and curiosity.
The British and American newspapers which I have tried to follow for half a century have done little to inform us about developments among Jainas. The same can be said in due course of cinema and television. This is not surprising since the general western media coverage of India is obsessed with its billions of people and "newsworthy" items like riots, bombs and curious customs. So we hear repetitions of the chestnut of immensely rich merchants hiring someone to sleep in their beds to keep the bugs alive and of course the bird hospital. That Jainas who had lived there since time began had to leave Pakistan in 1947 and start a new life that Jainas tried to impart distinctive features to politics, industry, economics and the law in the New India, or that a self-conscious, self-supporting all-India community emerged, would hardly get known. The lively academic give-and-take between scholars fared better but one feels that somehow the west continued until towards the end of this last hundred years to miss the heart and universal significance of Jainism. It remained an objective phenomenon of no great own-life significance. It might be that we have taken to heart and mind the Enlightenment dichotomy of religious belief and the rest of life, a kind of divorce between religion and ethics, politics, philosophy, economics, personal behavior. There is an inability to perceive the all-permeation of life by belief and spirituality.