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and the institution of devadravya (holy treasure) hit the sadhus and the reactionary forces behind them and they arryed in opposition to the movement launched by Paramanand Bhai. Paramanand Bhai's utterances echoed and re-echoed throughout the country among the Jainas, when he was ostracised by the Jain Swetambar Murti Pujak Sangh in Ahmedabad for his radical views.
JAIN JOURNAL
Paramanand Bhai was thus established as a religious reformer and social revolutionary. He penetratingly saw the bigotry which had found its way in the society in the name of religion. He wanted the society to change and get rid of the dead burden of the traditions. He challenged the Jaina monks and their authority, in determining and deciding and laying down the practices to be followed by them and by the laity in observance of the Jaina faith. He had observed and realised that religion, Jainism for him, had lost much of its meaning and appeal because of many senseless traditions and conventionalism which had shrouded the real religion. He wanted the Jainas to imbibe the real meaning of the Jaina faith as expounded by the Tirthankaras. His attempt was to wean the vital from the lifeless. He was born as Jaina and lived like a Jaina. He felt that the connotation of the Jaina faith had to be enlarged and a real social content had to be given to it. He wanted to bring scientific outlook in religious matters. He emphasised that truth was the basis of all true religions and it was on this base that all true religions aimed at making life more meaningful and more sublime. He very much liked the threefold principle of right perception, right knowledge and right conduct, the life-principle taught by the Jaina Tirthankaras, but he wanted that this principle be given reorientation in terms of evolution and advancement of the individual as well as the society. In doing so, he had a direct confrontation with the sadhus and their wealthy devotees who had developed vested interests in keeping the society tied down to the old and traditional practices preached and followed by them. Without meaning any disrespect to the monkhood and appreciating all that was really religious and good in them, he very emphatically stated that what we practice should be in consonance with the principles. He felt and said with emphasis that the time had come for examining and analysing the entire system of thought and practice taught and followed in the name of religion. He felt and said that religion was what religion did. He, by his thought and life proved that not only by birth, he was a Jaina he had the head and heart of Jainism. He did not write any commentaries on the philosophy or history of the Jaina religion which would make him a scholar but he wrote lessons of Jainism through life. It was his thought, his outlook and his living which rightly made him a Martin Luther.
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