Jain Spirit 2001 12 No 09

Author(s): Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains

Page 26

FEATURES
WOMEN
ARE EQUALS
Mark Tully continues his conversation with Professor Padmanabh Jaini,
probing the modern-day significance of such an idealistic tradition
OU LIVE IN A COUNTRY, WHICH IS THE ARCH PROMOTER OF Now I would like to talk a little about asceticism because consumerism: America. How do you feel about this, it is so important for you. I remember years ago when I which goes against the very asceticism of not buying? studied classics, one thing we were always taught was the
great theme of the Greek tragedy: nothing in excess. It Well, I must say that it is very alienating. We already see the
seems to me often that the sort of asceticism practised by danger that has overtaken our civilization in cities like Los
the Jains is excessive, it goes too far in that direction, it is Angeles and even smaller places like my university town
life denying, it is almost cruelty to oneself. Berkeley. Huge supermarkets are rising together with violence and unrest. Families are falling apart and even schoolboys are
ys are It may appear so and probably there is some truth in what taking guns to their schools. Life is not safe even at home: you say in comparison. Asceticism has a long history families live behind closed doors guarded
in India and can be traced to even a by alarm systems. I nevertheless believe
thousand years before the advent of that the North Americans with their
"The Jains are Mahavir, the Jain Tirthankara, and puritanical past and strong ethnic
Gautama the Buddha around 500 B.C. sub-cultures have within them the ability distinguished by their What distinguished these two ascetic to realise the futility of such excessive
figures is that they renounced their accumulation in pursuit of happiness. treatment of women as household life while still in the prime
of their youth, and were able to attract I lived in India and now I see with equals of men.”
thousands of affluent young men and great sadness that instead of this
women to follow their example, consumerism declining, it is actually
disregarding the duties to their now beginning to sweep across India, although I would agree
family, their community and to their King, or as we might with you in your belief that it is utterly alien to the Indian
say, to their country. But in doing this they also gave birth spirit.
to a new society, which not only accepted these renunciants,
but even considered it meritorious to support these Well, there is something fatalistic about it. I recall the astute
homeless people with food and shelter. The Jain chronicles observation made by a European thinker that the fate of the
claim that at the time of the death of Mahavir (traditionally world is to be Americanised. You cannot help it. This
in 527 B.C) his congregation consisted of 14,000 monks consumerism is probably going to grow for a long while in
and 36,000 nuns. Today in a population of some six million, India. But I believe that the Indian genius - which has produced
there are about 2,000 monks and over 5,000 nuns, Mahatma Gandhi in our times - will find a way to turn away
maintaining the same ratio as during the time of Mahavir. It from this craze. There is no doubt that the poor in India will
should be noticed that these ascetic orders returned their gift need to come out of their present level of deprivation before
tenfold by teaching about the holy path and in many cases they will see the perils of consumerism of the West.
were the only centres of literacy outside of the Brahmanical
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Jain Spirit . December 2001 - February 2002