Anuvrat Movement Theory And Practice

Author(s): Shivani Bothra
Publisher: Florida International University

Page 83

The Harvard University's Pluralism Project has identified 107 Jain centers in the
United States including about two-dozen Jain temples. With so many Jain centers, it
was initially quite difficult to decide where to begin my fieldwork. Eventually I decided
to begin where I study in Miami and continued my research in Los Angeles at the Jain
Center of Southern California (JCSC). The JCSC was organizing a series of ten special
lectures during the period of Das Lakshan!3 (the Festival of Ten Virtues) in September
2012. Taking advantage of this occasion, I set forth to find out how Jains immersed in
ritualistic practices were responding to the non-religious Anuvrat Movement.
My first interview was at the residence of Professor Tara Sethia, a Jain by
background, professor of History, and founder and director of the Ahimsa Center at
California State Polytechnic University Pomona. She is also the author of recently
published book Gandhi: Pioneer of Nonviolent Social Change.
I wondered whether she had gotten the inspiration for the Ahimsa Center from
Tulsi's Anuvrat Movement, Mahapragya's Ahimsa Yatra'4 or from Gandhi's nonviolent
action. When I asked her from where the inspiration came, to my great surprise she
replied: "My own discipline of History, my students and my samskara."IIS Explaining
further, she said "I was disappointed the way college history textbooks explain historical
change by focusing largely on the role of violent revolutions, conflicts and warfare. This
leads students to associate power with coercion, control and violence. The educational
112 Ibid., 100.
1This is the festival where Jains practice vows and fast.
" It is a nonviolent journey, another Terapanth activity initiated by Acharya Mahapragya.
115 Tara Sethia, interview by Shivani Bothra, September 20, 2012.