Jain Shwetambar Tirth Antriksha Parshwanath

Author(s): Antriksha Parshwanath Sansthan Shirpur
Publisher: Antriksha Parshwanath Sansthan

Page 91

Swetambaris and Digambaris was formed to undertake the management of all affairs, the prime mover tn the arrangement on behalf of the Swetambaris having apparently been Kalyanchand Lalchand one of the present respondents.
This committee, acting on behalf of both sects joined in instituting criminal proceedings against the Polkars, who as a result, were reduced to the position of servants both It was clearly the view of the learned Trial Judge, not dissented from an appeal, that but for the aid of the Digambaris then rendered, and but for the monetary assistance then provided to them, the temple and all control over it would have been lost to both sects.
This made all the more significant the proceedings at a general meeting of the Jains in 1905, at which, the Joint Committee still being in management, there was framed a scheme whereby the worship of the idol was to be performed by both sects in turns according to a regular time-table, which allocated precisely the same length of time for worship to each sect. The result, as held by both Courts, was that for the further period between the ejectment of the Polkars and the quarrel over the plastering of the idol in 1908. The two sects managed the temple through their committee, and worship was carried on by each sect in accordance with its own ceremonies and observances as prescribed by the time-table propounded in 1905, and in the view of the learned Trial Judge, these arrangement set at rest all disputes as to worship and as to the management of the Sansthan so far as the peculiarities of their worship and devotion went and they practically set a seal upon the recoginsed privileges of each party. Giving effect, therefore, to a plea of estopple set up by the defendants, he held that the plaintiff Swetambaris could not longer deny the right of the Digambaris to the joint management of the temple and to the worship of the idol in their own way as both of these matters were in the year 1905.
The learned judge's decree is dated the 27th March, 1918. Naturally no declaration that the Swetambaris are
(70)