ISJS Jainism Study Notes E5 Vol 03

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

Page 150

B.5.12
Concepts of Freedom, Law and Justice in Jainism
Dr. Meenal Katarnikar
Introduction: In order to understand the notions of law and justice in any society, it is very essential to understand the theoretical framework of freedom as has been established in or granted by that society. And the reason is very simple. The notions of law and justice make sense only in and for the society of free human beings.
At the face value, the title of the presentation creates the impression that it is a discussion of the relation between freedom and the other legal concepts at spiritual level as explored in the Jaina religio-philosophic tradition. Even though this impression is not completely incorrect, the emphasis of the present discussion will be on the relation between freedom and the legal concepts in the political-social context as conceived in the Jain tradition. And here, there may be some conceptual problem. Political concepts are in themselves, incompatible with, or at least far away from any system of religion, or for that matter, even ethics. All religions conceive man as a moral, spiritual agent. None of them, or very few of them conceive the life of the state as independent of moral faith, or as the highest kind of life for man. As a consequence, any purely formalistic, secular concept of freedom and its relation to legal concepts would be irreligious or in other words non-derivable from the religious tenets. In short, deriving any secular notion of freedom from the religious doctrines of Jainism appears to be inconceivable.
Apart from this general problem of the relation between religion and political theory, there is a specific problem with reference to Jainism.
Jainism belongs to an ascetic tradition. According to its basic tenets, the highest goal of human life is spiritual liberation, which can be obtained by the entire denial, renunciation of the mundane life. In human society, there is a large group of non-ascetic people, but they do not have any right to spiritual liberation unless and until the embrace the ascetic life. Mundane life, or to use a proper Jaina word, a householder's life can be pious, but not worthy of spiritual liberation. On the background of such a radical negative attitude towards ordinary, non-spiritual life, it seems inconceivable to have any significant social-political theory referring to freedom.
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