ISJS Jainism Study Notes E5 Vol 01

Author(s): International School for Jain Studies
Publisher: International School for Jain Studies

Page 201

SCHOOL
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SELF STUDY IS THE SUPREME AUSTERITY
स्वाध्याय परम तप
AN STUDIES
arise the need to control, confine and regulate women; and second (which follows from the first), the placing of a great value on chastity, especially in the context of the female - resulting in a system of both external and internal controls, the latter far more severe in Jainism than in any other organized religion. Thus women have to deal with double standards, and grapple with questionable male ethics and morality.
The modern Jain woman
The sex ratio among Jains in India, as per the census of 2001, is 870 per 1000 males - female feticide is known among the Jains - and although 90% of Jain women are educated, only 9% are active contributors to the work force. This bears out the argument that women are regulated, and kept out of public spaces. So where does that leave the Jain woman of today? Ethnographic researches and religious studies such as N. Shanta's, or Whitney Kelting's, and more recently Manisha Sethi's 10 establish that the condition of the Jain woman is even more constricted than women in other religions and cultures: not only is she seen as the home-maker and the child-bearer, and the bearer of tradition within a patriarchal culture which she herself is constrained to contribute to and to propagate - but at the same time she also has extremely high ideals of faith to conform to. Women thus find that great demands are placed on their capabilities, and in twisting themselves to fit into each of these roles, begin to live 'heroic' lives (I use Kelting's vocabulary here) as a matter of course. A woman may of course opt out of a life of domesticity and choose to become a nun, despite its daunting ascetic codes - despite this, Jain nuns outnumber the monks by a little over 3:1. Nuns still have to remain subservient to their male peers, though, and must necessarily acknowledge their inferiority to the monks through the vandana vyavahāra, the act of bowing down to the male monks, which is practiced by even the most senior of nuns in the presence of even the most junior of monks. It is only to be hoped that women begin to see how dramatically different the rules that apply to men and women are, and perhaps begin to review their position vis a vis men - does samatva really imply equality with men, or does it imply, for women, an equanimity in the face of a discordant reality?
9 Figures cited by sociologist P C Jain during the course of a lecture titled "Sociology of the Jains" delivered under the aegis of the 8th International Summer School of Jaina Studies at Mangalayatan University on 14 June 2012.
10 See N. Shanta's The Unknown Pilgrims: History, Life and Spirituality of the Jaina Women, M. Whitney Kelting's Heroic Wives: Rituals, Stories and the Virtues of Jain Wifehood, and Manisha Sethi's Escaping the World: Women Renouncers Among Jains. New Delhi: Routledge, 2012.
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STUDY NOTES version 5.0