JAINA Convention 1993 07 Pittusburgh

Author(s): Federation of JAINA
Publisher: USA Federation of JAINA

Page 41

Gandhi. It is not difficult to imagine what a success Mr. Gandhi was as a lawyer. He captured the hearts and minds of many and a permanent work was started. It is possible to grasp the overall scope of his teaching, the integration of his religion with his plans for education, social reform, politics, science and true happiness, by reading a book by his English disciple Herbert Warren. It would be a labor of love for some young Jain historian of the born-in-America generation to visit the places in U.S.A. and U.K where he spoke and collect and analyse his teaching and its implications. In the meantime we have to be grateful to a Mr. Bhagu F. Karbhari of Bombay for a helpful book which collects some of the speeches and gives an outline of his life. A readily available and popular style (vulgarisation in the best sense of the French word) story of the life of this heroic and tragic figure is required. Probably the American Jain community will not make of him a Martin Luther King or a C_sar Chavez or a Sardar Mewar Singh, but he was a great person of his own kind and of his own day and deserves our admiration and appropriate emulation.
A Biography of Mr. Virchand Gandhi
For fuller details of his work in U.S.A. and England and his speeches we must again refer to Mr. Bhagu F. Karbhari. In a brief sketch of "his short but useful career" (pages IV-XIV) we are informed Mr. Gandhi was born on 25 August 1864 near Bhavnagar. His father was a very orthodox Jain jeweler. His parents took him to Bhavnagar for an English education. The nature of this is not specified but judging from Mr. Gandhi's style and remarks it was presumably presided over by Christian missionaries. He got into Elphinstone College, Bombay University, and obtained his BA in 1884. He was soon asked to become Secretary to the Jain Association of India. He negotiated with the
Jain Education Intemational
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help of the influential Colonel Watson and Lord Reay, the Governor, a settlement of the claims of the Thakur Sahib of Palitana who had been taxing pilgrims to Satranjay Hill. Later, he signed articles to study law with the Government lawyers, even so he found time to go to Bengal and by a High Court appeal to shut down a factory based on animal slaughter which a European had located on a holy hill. He was the obvious choice to go to Chicago and so "he spent some time at the feet of His Holiness Muni Shri Atmaramji." His visit to Chicago is described and then his successful and triumphant stay at other places in U.S.A. He went to England and met his old friend Lord Reay, addressed the Royal Asiatic Society, a very distinguished and ancient group of scholars and retired British civil and military servants of India. (His F.R.A.S. so proudly displayed refers to his Fellowship in that illustrious society.) He returned home in 1895 and set off for the west again in 1896. It is reported that his wife accompanied him this time. He had another successful U.S. and U.K. tour, revisited India for a few weeks to gather evidence for a Jain community case before the Secretary of State and collect his son Mohanlal. He won that case and was called to the English Bar in 1901. He returned home in August 1901 and died soon afterwards, aged a mere 37
Earlier Western Knowledge of Jainism
Having said a little about the achievement of Mr. Virchand Raghavaji Gandhi in the west between 1893 and his untimely early death in 1901 we must turn back to consider some of the factors which helped Mr. Gandhi's listeners and readers to understand and respond to the message of Jainism. At any time in the nineteenth century, many westerners well versed in European culture would have read and wondered at the stories brought back from ancient
India by the Greeks. According to these there were in that far-off land naked philosophers who gave themselves to the solitary, homeless, possessionless life. They could not be coerced even by Alexander himself. They observed strict continence, ate little and willingly gave themselves to death. The stories are in rather a muddle but if one knows something about Jainism one can recognise specifically Jain features among these holy people, even down to those who received their alms only in their hands and not in bowls. To this day few scholars versed in Indian lore and the western classical languages have bothered to go over these accounts with the care and detail they deserve.7 Similarly we know that the early Christian fathers and mothers of the Church such as Clement of Alexandria, Jerome of Bethlehem and Ambrose of Milan knew of and were perhaps influenced by Indian ascetics. In addition, a number of features in early Christian Egyptian monasticism would appear to go back to Indian influences. These could include the teaching of people of Jain background, not only laity, who could use the winds to sail from Kutch to Egypt. Munis could have walked naked and dependent on alms if they chose the seasons and route carefully. Others have suggested that the Jains may have influenced the medieval Cathari. This is indeed quite possible, though the connecting link may be the overlap of Mani's teachings (Mani being considered as the original source of Catharism) with Jainism. Mani himself would probably have met Jain people.
Travelers' tales began to filter back to Europe and Britain also from medieval Arab sources. The western scholars' usual cursory glance through say Al Biruni and Ibn Battuta, impresses one with Indian mathematicians, technicians and scientists who were not overcommunicative. Would you befriend a scholar working for Mahmud of Ghazni or Muhammad Tuqluk? One also glimpses naked holy persons and self
"The Jains have created a system of metaphysics, minutely developed, which in its terminology as also its content, could be looked upon as an independent and unique product in the philosophical systems of the wonderfully fruitful Indian spirit."
-Dr. Helmuth Von Glasenapp
7TH BIENNIAL JAINA CONVENTION - JULY 1993 For Private & Personal Use Only