Development And Impact Of Jainism In India And Abroad

Author(s): Gunvant Barvalia
Publisher: Arham Spiritual Center

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CONTRIBUTIONS OF NRI'S TO JAIN SHASHAN
Vidyalaya alumni in July of 1991. Its primary goal is to promote the cause of Professional Education in the Jain community irrespective of sect. Currently, it represents over 500 alumni residing in North America and has raised over 1.5 million dollars since its inception. Over the years through interest free loans, IAAMJV has helped 350 Jain students coming from India and seeking graduate studies, 100 undergraduate students born in the States and over 400 students going to different colleges in India. In addition, the association has helped the mother institute in establishing a girls' hostel in Ahmedabad in 1994 and also fully funded a branch of MJV at Udaipur in 2001. The current IAAMJV President is Ramesh Fofaria, N. C. who has served the association in different capacities for the last 20 yrs.
In addition to the activities supported by JAINA, many individuals have made their impacts that are worth noting:
Dr. Dhiraj H Shah of Buffalo, NY won victory in court against US military's requirement of all legal residents and US citizens over the age of 18 to register for serving in the US military. Citing Jain doctrine of non- violence, Dhirajbhai obtained Conscientious bjector status - exemption for all the Jains- for all the times in the future meaning no jain could be drafted against his or her will into military service.
Vinod Daryapurkar of Atlanta has created a very comprehensive JAINWORLD web portal that is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. With more than 500 volunteers working tirelessly, it has more than 92,000 visitors every day from 151 countries. It has 75,000 web pages, 8,000 images and 600 hours of audio recordings. The site has sections in 18 world languages like Chinese, Portuguese, French, Russian, Korean, German and Japanese and 9 Indian languages like Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Prakrut, Marathi, Tamil and Oriya.
There is Dr. Siddharth Bhansali in New Orleans with fabulous and world-renowned Jain Art collection that has been displayed at many prestigious art galleries in the US and overseas. DrVinay Jain in Texas who has established multi million Dollar charity "JivDaya Foundation" with a mission to improve quality of life around the world with primary focus on health care and education.
Dr. Bharat Shah of NY has written books on Jainism, learning Gujarati and learning
Sanskrit.
Special mention should be made of some world-renown Jain academicians in America:
Dr. Dipak Jain, dean at Insead School of management in France and formerly the dean of the Kellogg Business School in Chicago preaches value of Jain ethics in Business. He serves on the board of many multi national companies and special foreign affairs advisor to the Prime Minister of Thailand.
DrJagdishSheth, Proffessor of Marketing at Emory University in Atlanta, GA, was conferred "Global Management Guru Award" by Birla Institute of management Technology in 201. He is author of many books on Marketing. He coined a word "Chindia" to illustrate rising economic powers of China and India in his 2008 book "CHINDIA RISING".
Dr. Tara Sethia (Author of the book "Ahimsa, Anekanta and Jainism) at Cal Tech, Pamona
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