An Ahimsa Crisis: You Decide: The Use Of Animal–based Products Other Than Food

In this chapter I will examine the use of animal and insect- based items that are used every day for the covering and beautification of the body and for home and automobiles furnishings.

Please note: here, I am not at all implying with the practices and incidents described in the following stories in this chapter are peculiar to the Jain community only; neither I am assigning blame. In fact many non-Jains also practice the same very frequently. Since ahimsa is the external manifestation of confidence, inner purity and wholeness and Jains are the keepers of ahimsa, it is their paramount duty to think, contemplate, and then decide their prevalent habits, customs, traditions, and practices with the light of ahimsa.

Jains have used cotton and its derivatives for all types of clothing for a long time but in the last several decades the use of silk, wool, feather, down, leather, fur, and human-made fibers (nylon, synthetics) are also becoming normal in the Jain households.