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14
Jaina Community-A Social Survey
from only 3 districts compared to the Western Pocket which covers 4,47,218 Jaina persons from 15 districts. Thus the Southern Pocket of Kolhapur, Sangli and Belgaum Districts stands out as a unique geographical area in the context of the distribution of the Jaina population in India.
The three districts in the Southern Pocket are also significant from different aspects of Jaina population like the total population of the district, the proportion of rural population, and the density of population. The districts having more than 50,000 Jaina population are given in Table 11.
Table 11
Sr.
District
State
No.
Jaina population of
the District
nini
Greater Bombay Belgaum Ahmedabad Kolhapur Udaipur Sangli Kutch
Maharashtra Mysore Gujarat Maharashtra Rajasthan Maharashtra Gujarat
2,44,721 1,10,135 1,04,047
93,264 78,507 59,457 57,107
From the above table it is evident that the district of Greater Bombay has got the maximum number of Jaina population compared to any district in India. But since Bombay is a big metropolitan city and the financial capital of India, the large majority of Jainas in Bombay are not indigenous persons but are mainly migrants from other parts of India. The situation in Ahmedabad district is not much different from that of Greater Bombay district. Out of 1,04,047 Jaina population of Ahmedabad district, 97,641 Jainas reside in the urban areas-and mostly in Ahmedabad City-and only 6,406 Jainas reside in the rural areas of the district. Compared to these two districts, the districts of Belgaum, Kolhapur and Sangli stand out prominently from the point of view of the total Jaina population in a district.
Regarding the proportion of rural Jaina population in a district also, the three districts of Belgaum, Kolhapur and Sangli compare most favourably with other districts. The districts
