Book Title: Jain Shwetambar Conference Herald 1911 Book 07
Author(s): Mohanlal Dalichand Desai
Publisher: Jain Shwetambar Conference
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1911]
Jain Students' Social Gathering.
[99
us
great causes it is absolutely necessary that all Jains should assimilate under a common banner. I should like to be more clear on these causes which compel us and demand of assimilation without any delay whatsoever. Look to our numerical weakness. Far and wide dispersed throughout the length and bredth of India we are only one million and a half compared with 225 millions of the remaining Hindus. The proportion is nearly; 150; tremendous odds A community having a large population can afford to be divided even though it may be unwise, but we cannot. Then look at the problems demanding immediate solution at our hands. We must educate our children by giving them liberal, scientific, physical, moral and religious education, we have to look to more than 36000 Swetamber temples, [I do not know the number of Digamber temples, ] we have to preserve our rights on our holy places against the inroads of outsiders, we have to revive almost dying literature of the past extending over crores of verses, we have to properly employ the unemployed amongst our brethren, we have to fulfil our grand mission of Universal Mercy, we have to explore antiquity, we have to bring to light the lives of our great saints of the past, we have to organise special modes of imparting religious training, we have to add to the numbers of our community by adding to it converts, we have to prepare schemes for that mission and what not; I cannot exhaust the list which is very great; only the principal avenues of the possible directions of our. efforts have been depicted to show their manifoldedness. Thus owing to our numerical weakness and the manifoldedness of the actions awaiting their solution at our hands the mere struggle for our existence has become very strenuous. Census reports clearly show that every decade we are going down numerically, and if the decay may go on for some time at the rate it is going on as reported, in course of two three centuries, we may be wiped off the history of India as an
