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JAINS AND THEIR RELIGION IN AMERICA: A SOCIAL SURVEY
Dr BHUVANNEDRA KUMAR
Introduction
In the study of South Asian religions in North American Universities that has begun in recent years, Jainism, which has been professed by millions from very ancient times in India, finds only a casual referenc. However, Harvard University had its first Jain doctoral student, late professor Kendall W. Folkert. In 1975, Folkert was awarded doctoral degree for his thesis-"Two Jaina Approaches to Non-Jains: Patterns and Implications." Since then, a few more American universities have produced doctoral thesis on different aspects of Jainism.
This paper as the title suggests deals with Jain religion and its followers in Canada and the United States, and the first half introduces Jain religion by examining its characteristics, its historical evolution and its religious structure as propounded and propagated by its twentyfour Jinas, from a period of long antiquity in the history of Indian subcontinent. The second half establishes Jain migrations from India at differnet periods: circa 300 B.C.E., medieval times and the last centuries of the present millennium. It establishes Jain population in America, placed at about one hundred thousand. Then, it examines Jaina sociological and moral modalities in America, underlined by important characteristic features of identity in contrast to other South Asian religious traditions. Thus, Jaina socio-anthropologic and an ethnographic profile of the "peaceful liberators" in America is presented.
Jainism, an ancient religion practised mostly in India by over just ten million people, is neither known, nor taught at American schools and universities, in the format that a world religion is introduced to pupils. Prof. Kay Koppedrayer of the University of Wilfred Laurier at Waterloo discusses this issue thoroughly and eloquently. She says that "with the exception of those Indian background or those who have taken a secondary school level world religion course, most university student I teach know nothing whatsoever of Jainism."1
1. Jinamanjari, Vol.9, April 1994.
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