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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 politicalsocial 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.
Moreover, the concept of spiritual freedom is defined as total empting of the active life that can be obtained by radically non-violent way of living. The extreme emphasis on extreme non-violence and on inactive life is theoretically in contradiction with any secular idea of freedom that involves freedom to do something along with freedom from something, and also with any possibility of political freedom that embeds a partial coercion if not complete.
Although these conceptual difficulties are there in chalking out any socio-political concept of freedom in Jaina theoretical framework, there is one major reason to find out the threads of such notions, and the reason comes from the history of India. During the medieval period, there were a number of kingdoms that patronized Jaina religion and there were few kings who adopted Jainism. This is an attempt to find out those thought- constructions of individual and state freedom of Jainism that might have attracted these rulers, who were technically the Sravakas, the householders, and also to see the relation between such freedom and violence - which is inevitable aspect of state and which is the first and foremost taboo in the Jaina tradition.
Jain Concept of Freedom:As a sramanic tradition, Jainism rejects a socio-centric or any other type of secular view in which the society and the state stand as the externally available saviors of man. According to it human happiness is determined by a transcendent cause, i. e. the past karmas of the individual. Each individual is subject to his own separate destiny.
As a philosophy, Jainism stands on the four pillars: viz Atmavada, Lokavada, Karmavada and Kriyavada. Soul by itself is imperceptible, it is perceived only through the medium of body. The word
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