ISJS Transactions 2018 07 To 09 Vol 02 No 03

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

Page 16

How does this impact householder teaching of religious values? As we have seen womenplay a significant role in the religious instruction of children. Jain men, unable to find a Jain wife may resort to inter-sect, inter-religious marriages. Dr. Prakash Jain says this situation has a deleterious effect on marriages. Within this small study of ten householder women, qualitative, if not quantitative evidence has corroborated this fact, at least in terms of the transmission of Jainism to future generations. A Jain householder reported that her Digambara mother, who married a Svetāmbara, gave up on much of the Jainism learned from her parents. As a result, many rituals and household practices were lost to the next generation, And, as previously noted, in a household with two wives, one Jain and one Hindu, no instruction in Jainism was given to the daughter of the Hindu wife and the Jain child was deprived of the spiritual guidance of an aunt. Although, according to Dr. Jain, some men are paying for Hindu wives to be trained in Jainism, it would be difficult to imagine that such training can replace generations of accumulated Jain householder practices learned over time at home.
There may be reason to hope, however. Despite the fact that the Jain Digambara gave up on much of her Digambara practice, her daughter reported that she still practiced much of a general Jain lifestyle, such as not eating potatoes and eggs and keeping the home clean and dry to discourage the breeding of insects:
[In my house) we took care of water, turned off [the] fan, tried to save electricity. My mother used minimum water and didn't use the shower. She didn't even wash in the wash basin. ... The fifth, eighth and fourteenth day [of the month we eat] no vegetables.... My mother never bought a sari, she just wore gifts.
Additionally, throughout history, other religions have survived despite having to replace female believers with non-practicing women, such as the Jewish slaves, who were sent to the German Rhineland by Roman officials, where they married German women, thus giving rise to two millennia of Ashkenazi Judaism. One has more sympathy with the Jewish slaves, as the loss of Jewish women was not due to female feticide.
There are prejudices against women throughout Indian society, and though Jains generally rejoice in the birth of a daughter and educate her well, there is still prestige associated with the birth of a son, who is seen as more able of supporting his parents than a daughter. One interview subject, the eldest of five sisters, felt this prejudice acutely.
I'm the eldest, but because we were six sisters and my father was an upper division clerk..., so many times, I used to listen to "if a boy would have been bom, he would have done like this and he would have done like this," I thought, Okay, I'm not a boy, it doesn't matter. But I can do what a boy would have done. So, I used to do the outer activity also. Supposing my younger sister was to be admitted in any school, so I took her to the school. Supposing somebody was ill, I'd take him or her, or even my grandfather to the hospital. And I stayed there with my grandfather.
In a lecture at the International Summer School for Jain Studies, sociologist Prakash Jain reported that a mere 12% of Jain women have entered the workforce. In my narrow pool of
10 ISJS-Transactions, Vol.2, No.3, Jul-Sep, 2018
subjects, 80% of the women were working. Nevertheless, Jain women often exhaust themselves with the responsibilities of work and home and family. Sneha, a translator of