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Vol. 13, No. 2, April 2001, 57-62
ARHAT VACANA Kundakunda Jñanapitha, Indore
SEARCHING FOR JAINA IDENTITY IN NORTH AMERICA
Dr. S.A. Bhuvenendra Kumar
Growing North American socio-religious integration is a fact of life. As it progresses, Jainas are going to be confronted time and again with the question of whether it makes sense to keep their religious identity. Particularly so since their traditional authority figuratively holds no sway in the so-called North American 'horizontal society' which tends to focus on identity of group manifesting through mass culture. The virtual reality of the Jaina sense of identity in this environment is that socio-culture and religious traditional hierarchies no longer rule allowing it almost to the verge of irretrievable condition. The Jaina vertical authority that naturally ties parents, community and peers together has weakened, causing withering and lack of propensity to reach out to its various elements for creating or retaining a sense of Jaina identity in North America.
Mobility in the context of Jaina community of North America is accelarating literally and figuralively cultural homogenization is in effect due to the absence of Jaina vertical moorings of visual and hierarectual tradition. To lose these vertical moorings in an exposed and expanded new environment, the boundaries of primary Jaina identity will transcend its socio-cultural and religious 'externals' and as well its physico-physical 'modes'. Sense of identity therefore cannot be seen or chosen as matter of choice. The feeling of choice and control therefore largely will become an illusion at an enormous social and religious loss. This loss may eventually shatter the general belief : 'the right and power to construct life, a meaning and an identity.'
Growing individualism in terms of real stability is a problem of an alienated when efficacy of traditional institutions and church becomes stagnant, connecting very little to the events occuring in and around it. Therefore, it becomes necessary for the Jaina voices to ask quietly whether the time is not ripe to think about preparation for a tangible and ubiquitous symbol of 'Jain Community within the context of circumbient North American Society?
Who will and how will the question be answered by Jainas? They simply cannot afford to accept the proposition that the community' is an article of faith to define and develop a sense of identity. The Jain identity in North America - whether to continue pursuing as it exists in the sub-continental South Asia is a matter of purely rarefied policy Jain institutions have to make
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