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renunciates vow to renounce all interest in worldly things and the laity vow to limit their
possessions to only what is essential whenever possible. The mahavrat are meant to be
absolute and permanent, whereas the anuvrat are goals that laypersons strive to attain and
could be undertaken for limited periods of time, depending on one's capacity, in order to
bring one closer to the ideal way of life exemplified by the renunciates. Because these
five categories of vows have been so pervasive in many religious traditions in India, Tulsi
used them as a foundation for his movement.
In tracing the birth of the movement, I straightaway begin with the response
received from one of the early Anuvrati interviewee: “Acharya Tulsi was disenchanted by
human psyche rooted in selfishness, over-competiveness, over-consumerism, and
maximization of profits by wrong means. Such conditions in post-independence India
were the immediate inspiration for the emergence of the Anuvrat Movement."12
Thereupon, Tulsi adopted an innovative perspective and modified the existing traditional
anuvrat vows with a hope-for major impact of the movement. His strategy was twofold:
on the one hand, the movement was geared towards creating a platform for interfaith
dialogue by overcoming the cultural and religious barriers between Jains and non-Jains.
On the other hand, he did not want to limit the movement to the Terapanth sect, as Jains
are already a minority group in India and Terapanth a minority within Jainism. The small,
close-knit group of Terapanthis may have formed Tulsi's core base of followers, but his
goal from the beginning was to address social ills of the wider Indian society.
12 Aloke Roy, interview by Shivani Bothra, trans, Shivani Bothra, August 7, 2012.
