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A NOBLE SERVER OF THE NOBLE CAUSE
By
Sri, Jyoti Prasad Jain M.A. LL B, Meerut.
History is race memory. If a nation knows nothing of its history, it has lost its memory and so its identity. It now becomes a new nation with all to learn anew. And it cannot have a true feeling of nationhood. It is its history which gives the key to the spirit of a nation. The present has grown out of the past which cannot be understood without a knowledge of history.
And as Thomas Carlyle has oftly observed in 'Heroes and Hero-worship', "universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the history of the greatmen who worked that." In every age, men who rose head and shoulders above their fellows, by strong character, dominant personality intellectual genius-have been the modellers, patterners, creators of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or attain. It is why Ralph Weldo Emerson said, "All history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons." More. over, by reading about great persons, our mind becomes peopled with many noble and great figures, and we come to feel a deeper interest in humanity as a whole.
And what is true about humanity as a whole or about a race, nation or country, is equally true about a community or cultural unit, however small. In fact, the history of a nation is nothing but a summing up of the histories of the various communities, societies and cultural units it consists of. Particularly, in the case of our own country, we cannot think of a history of India in any particular period without taking into account the cultural contributions and the efforts in advancing progress of the numerous and various communities that people this land.
Like the Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Parsees, Christians, Budhists and others the Jains have all along the historical times formed themselves into a definite and distinct community as well as a cultural group, while unlike most of them Jainism is a purely indigenous
