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No. 1
Babu Deo Kumar Ji Jain periodical which is subscribed by most of the intellectual aristocracy of the country and the centres of research works. It is these characteristics of this library which won the approbation of Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya and other great personalities of India when they happened to visit this part of the country. It has also attracted scholars from Germany and America who specially came to this place in connection with research works.
Again Babu Deokumarji, being an advocate of female education, established, at the same time, a Primary Girls' School at Arrah. The effect produced by this institution is evident from the fact that today we find not a single illiterate woman in the Jain community at Arrah.
He also worked for the All India Digamber Jain Mahasabha which aims at roping in all the scattered elements of the Jain community and organising them into a homogenous body. He was to a large extent respɔnsible for the popularity of the Mahasabha. In the Kundalpur session of the Mahasabha held in April 1907, he was elected President. His presidential speech was vibrant with the same religious spirit as was evinced during his south India pilgrimage and in his editorials of the 'Jain Gazette'. He chalked out in his speech several programmes for the emancipation of Jain community which still serve as a beacon light to social and religious reformers of the community. The speech on the whole was bristling with gems of noble thoughts-provoking ideas, and I'may crave the indulgence of the readers if I quote a few passages from it here :
The reason why we fail today in all our undertakings, that all our activities are divorced from Religion, and accordingly all our movements aimed at the betterment of society is bound to fail. Hopps said “You can not, if you wished it, suddenly reverse the policy of generations and abolish the machinery that has set the pace and determined the products of hundred years." Mr. Humphry Wood said “The world cannot get on without morals. They are the binding forces for solidarity and continuity. I take my stand on morals, and if you give me morals, you must give me the only force that can guarantee them-dogma,-and ritual,--and superstition,--and all the foolish ineffable things that bind mankind together, and send them
