Jain Journal 1970 01

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 70

178
JAIN JOURNAL
non-injury to microscopic air-beings. Excepting during the rainy season when they stay put to avoid useless trampling of new vegetation, the ascetics wander on foot even in our modern times. Jaina ascetics are both men and women.
9.
Women, yes, what is their position in the Jaina community?
... on the road to the emerging single standard of our era. Historically, to survive, a minority must take on the majority social views. For Indian women, this was child marriage and status as the mother of sons. We confess this is not the woman's favorite India. Nor was it one man's the barrister C. R. Jain, who in 1911 spoke loud and strong against child marriage and the marriage of young girls to old men. Independence, 1947, gave Indian women legal freedom. Today, the contraceptive revolution gives them promise of body freedom. Jaina women thereby return to their ancient freedoms and honours. For the Jaina religion on its own always gave women freedom to choose mates, to remarry after divorce or widowhood, to inherit property, and to achieve education. The first teacher, Rsabhadeva, took women into the order before the second millennium B. C.; in 1968 a Jaina nun on her last journey received the homage of the whole Madras city. Rsabhadeva also gave his daughters, not his sons, the alphabet; in 1969 professional women with the surname 'Jain' are in telephone directories of the big four Indian cities. Currently India enters the age of space communication. Western behavior will have instant Indian replay. Under pressure of changing times will Jaina women hold to ancient Jaina code? More aptly we ask, will Jaina men? For relentlessly our era is emerging into the single behavioral standard. Will Jaina men so manage themselves that they welcome women to share their conduct in both religious and work-a-day life?
10. Do Jainas eat meat?
...no, no, not for all the world! Jainas are ethical vegetarians, with the severest discipline of all Indian schools. For them the science of the right and the nature of the good add up to the least destructive course open to human survival. And for the sarcasm, Jainas have the answers. Example: How can you eat that living brinjal? Do you see a difference between eating animals and eating humans? Certainly! So how you feel about eating humans, I feel about eating animals. And how you feel about eating animals, I feel about eating brinjals. The average American, aged seventy, has eaten the equivalent in cattle alone of one hundred fifty. Cannibalistic karma! Already it bears fruit in the U. S. death rate from heart disease, the highest in the world. As for the protein deficiency bogy, the Jaina points both to East and West, to his own