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incision into the oyster's soft body, and putting some gravel inside (this gravel is a bit of shell/tissue from another freshly sacrificed life). Imagine the pain of a splinter in your finger and then multiply that many times over to understand the pearl oyster's continuous agony. An oyster is liable to die while being incised, and stands only a ten percent chance of surviving the seven years until the one single pearl is formed. Only forty percent of the pearls obtained are marketable and only five percent are, as desired by consumers, perfectly spherical. Each and every pearl represents hundreds of thousands of shells being opened up and discarded after killing those oysters.
Apart from jewelry, mother of pearl, another living shell-based decoration, is often used on decorative items. For example, Lacoste polo shirts frequently use buttons made of mother of pearl.
Enamel/Meenakari: This process involves firing a special decorative paint that contains varnish or resin. The paint, varnish, or resin could contain animal substances.
Lac/Shellac: Used for bangles and handicrafts, these also have footprints of himsa.
Shells: Used as temple conches, buttons, jewelry and assorted trinkets. Each shell is the home of a living marine creature known as a mollusk. The shells are dredged from the ocean bed and boiled alive to kill the animals inside before drying and selling commercially. Instead, one can buy Bishnupura Terracotta conch shells available, for example, at the Central Cottage Industries Emporium, that blow and sound like real conch shells.
Scrimshaw: this is the art of intricately carving and decorating whalebone/tooth, ivory, or shell.
I have seen the use of pearls in Jain temples on Jain idols. Similarly, during Paryshana on Bhagwan Mahavir Janam Vaachan day and swapna ceremonies, and during ghee boli for fund raising, and to develop the tempo for higher ghee bolis,
An Ahimsa Crisis: You Decide
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