Jainism in a Global Perspective - Collection of Jain papers of 1993 Parliament of World Religions, Chicago

SR No.: 014010
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Sagarmal Jain, Shreeprakash Pandey
Publisher: Parshwanath Vidyapith
Publication Year: 1998
Total Pages: 402
Language: English
Classification: Seminar & Articles
File Size: 23 MB

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Jainism in a Global Perspective
is involved. The healing, joyfulness, harmony and wholeness of the whole cosmos is fostered and brought into play.
When one tries, however badly and haltingly, to explain this Jaina faith and way of life to a western audience, again and again good people will exclaim: "Why have we not been told of this before?" "What a neat religion, how can I learn more?" Actually much has already been told, but until recently only a very few have been in a position of life and heart to respond. The World's Parliament of Religion of 1893 when alone Jaina delegate, Mr. Virchand Raghavaji Gandhi, declared Jainism to the West, can be taken as a convenient center point before and after which our description runs.2 Recently, the media and publicity people have made our heads buzz with centenaries, bicentennials, quinquecentennials and millennia. My own head is buzzing with the centennial of the Parliament, with seven decades since the Indus Vally Civilization was discovered, the half century of Indian Independence and Partition coming up in 1997, the half millennium since Vasco da Gama reached Calicut in 1498 and west and east began a face-to-face encounter, and 1097 when Mahmud of Ghazni launched centuries of Muslim invasions of Hindustan. Of course, the year 2000 is coming up, but let us avoid the temptation of expatiating on that.
The gist of meditations on the deeper meaning of the Parliament including the use of some of the methods of my colleagues in the invention of tradition and debunking school of revisionist historians, cross-fertilized by Apocalyptic insights ranging from the Maccabean Jews to Cargocultists in New Guinea, would take long to tell. There were not only subalternic resurgences of old hegemonies; for those who had eyes to see and ears to hear, behind Mr. Virchand Raghavaji Gandhi stands Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi. In its own way the Parliament gave the same message as the naval victory of Japan in 1905 or the massacre of the Indians at Jallianwala Bagh in 1919. Had western man listened we might have been spared the War of 1914-18 and its continuance in 1939-45 and the Cold War. Without doubt the significance of the Parliament is greater than at first appears and the personality and message of the Jaina delegate far from being debunkable, increases in stature and importance as the years pass.
Let us turn to say more about that delegate. Virchand Raghavaji Gandhi was born in 1864 near Bhavnagar in Gujarat. His family was from