Ahimsa Crisis You Decide

Author(s): Sulekh C Jain
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

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Foreword by Glenn D. Paige
This extraordinary book “An Ahimsa in Crisis: You Decide” offers an opportunity for education and
critical reflection by Jains and all who seek to realize nonviolent conditions from individual to global life. It is a model for self-critical inquiry within every other peace-seeking faith, philosophy, and practice. The author's self-revelatory introduction is reminiscent of the Confessions of St. Augustine and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and AConfession by Leo Tolstoy. Being neither monk nor academic scholar, but an engineering-trained Jain leader, his exposition of Jain Ahimsa ideals and critique of practices grows out of 50 years of cross-cultural experience bridging India and America. It will encourage self-reflection by readers in every vocation. For non-Jains this book will introduce Jain thought and practices related to Ahimsa (nonviolence in thought, word and deed). As the world's most comprehensive nonviolent religion, distinctive but closely related to Buddhism, Jainism seeks non-injury to all forms of sentient life (humans, animals, plants, and the life-supporting elements of the environment). While Jainism historically has not been a proselytizing faith within India or abroad, in view of pervasive global violence Sulekh Jain seeks to contribute to universal understanding of its nonviolent transforming potentials by introducing it in world universities, not only in departments of religion and philosophy but in other fields of education. To this end he and colleagues have founded the International School for Jain Studies (ISJS) that brings teachers and students to India. In this book readers will benefit from his skill as cross-cultural educator. One can envision it as a valuable text inviting discussion at all levels of formal and adult education as well as in Jain and other communities, media, and the peace policy-making world. Sulekh Jain's vision is that every human being can become an ahimsak (truly nonviolent person). He does not mean that
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An Ahimsa Crisis: You Decide