Jain Journal 1995 07

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

Page 29

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JAIN JOURNAL : Vol-XXX, No. 1. JULY 1995 damaging type of violence. But sometimes the violence, i.e., the intensity involved in the passions, that causes the obstruction, is not so strong as to become a hindrance in taking the right attitude and/ or in obeying the prescriptions of the householder, may at the same time be intense enough to create obstructions in the discipline of the monks. This is known as pratyākhyāni, i.e. a type of vi conceals the right vision of the monk and makes him step down from his position. The last but not the least type of violence is of mild intensity which though does not compel the monk to forgo his monkhood, but it surely creates an obstruction in the attainment of liberation, this is known as sanjavalana.
Whatever the case may be, violence is characterized in the present typology with the intensity of the kasāya which obstructs the royal road of realization. It creates a gap between the potentiality and the actuality.9
We have tried so far to show that the definition of violence as "the cause of the difference between the potential and the actual, between what could have been and what is“ fits well into the scheme of Jain philosophy". We have also tried to show that in Jainism violence does not mean merely hurting a person somatically but it also involves a psychological factor in the “actor”, the “sufferer" and the "act" of violence. The actor has the desposition, the sufferer is hurt mentally and intention is part of the act of violence. All these aspects or dimentions are to be taken together in order to understand violence as a whole.
The various dimensions of violence enumerated by Johan Galtung correspond roughly with the typologies framed in Jainism. But there is one important difference. Galtung distinguishes between the individual and the structural violence. The structural violence is the builtin violence in the very structure of a given society. It works as an obstruction in the realization of potentialities; but goes unrecognized by both the 'actor' as well as the 'sufferer'.
There is no mention of this type of structural violence in Jainism. As a matter of fact, Jainism is more concerned, or, rather pre-occupied by the conception of moksha, or, the realization of self. And, as such, it has emphasized only those agents of violence (viz. kaşāya) which cause hindrance in such a realization. We can very well "See" their role in society also as to how do these despositions are responsible in creating gulf between individual and individual, between individual and Society and so on. But this would be an extension of the Jaina thought. We may hope that some research scholars of peace may take up this aspect and enrich the Jaina Philosophy in its social perspective also. 9. See, Kamala Jain, The Concept of Pancasila in Indian Thought, P.V.
Research Institute, Varanasi, 1983 p. 54.