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37067 67/2, BTÀCT-GTA 2014
21
Jains' Contribution to Indian Culture
and Society
Prof. Prakash C. Jain
The Jains are an ancient community of India with their own distinctive religion and philosophy, worship and rituals, social customs and cultural traditions. The Jain identity is crystallized around Jainism which also provides the Jains with a world-view and a way of life that embodies self-reliance, social equality, inter-group tolerance, non-violence, and limiting one's desires and needs. Whatever might have been the numerical strength of the followers of Jainism in the past, presently they add up to less than five million people, which also includes the diasporic Jain population estimated at about 300,000 (Jain 2010; 2011a; 2011b).
The Jains have been a wealthy, though economically stratified community. The overall perception of the Jains as a wealthy community can be attributed to the fact that they have traditionally been engaged mainly in trade, commerce, and banking. Since the 18th century a number of Jains have also been engaged in industrial production in a big way." Not surprisingly, the Jains have varyingly been described by scholars as "the Jews of India”, “the middlemen minority”, “the marginal trading community", "the capitalist without capitalism”, etc. (See Bonacich 1972; Hardiman 1996; Laidlaw 1995: 104; Nevaskar 1971).
The business and trading character of the Jain community has been continuing even today. Thus according to the 2001 Census, only 18.3% of the Jain population was engaged in "working class” jobs (11.7% cultivators, 3.3% agricultural labourers, 3.3% household industry workers); the rest, that is, 81.7% were in “other” occupations. These other occupations comprise various trade and commercial activities and the modern education-based professions such as teaching, engineering, medicine, law, accountancy, management, information technology, etc. (See Jain 2011b).
Throughout their long history Jains have made tremendous contribution to the Indian culture and society which is quite disproportionate
