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Jaina Ethics
Indian literature, is foreign to Jaina literature; the greed for expansion is unmistakably condemned in the too well-known story of Bharata and Bāhubali. Injustice
The bigger fish swallow the smaller ones. The mighty and the aggressive prosper, the humble and the meek suffer.
The result is the rule of jungle. In the sphere of politics we kill and crush in the name of caste, creed and colour. The result is war and bloodshed.
Jainism brings us hope of justice in the form of doctrine of karman. As we sow, so shall we reap. Though there is no God who sits upon judgment on us, there is a law, based on the theory of cause and effect, which works automatically and unfailingly.
All life is equal and the stronger have no right to do any injustice to the weaker; and if they do, they do not harm anybody but themselves. Ill-feeling vitiates our moral structure first; it harms anybody else afterwards. To kill a man with a hot rod of iron, the killer will burn his own hands first before he can kill the other. It is not so much out of regard for the life of others that we are forbidden to kill, as out of regard for our own selves.
We should meet an injustice not with force but with forbearance. Enmity leads to enmity: but if we do not retaliate it, it subsides. The attitude of equanimity of Pārsva to Dharanindra and Kamatha, when the former tried to save him from the latter who tried to kill, beautifully illustrates the Jaina attitude.
Jainism has also opposed from the beginning any social injustice arising out of casteism or racialism. 'Mankind is one community', says Jinasena.1
Mahātmā Gāndhi successfully applied the creed of nonviolence to redress the injustice of one nation against another. The creed of non-violence, if applied to the international problems, has the potentiality of wiping out the institution of war from the surface of earth. 1. Caral
--Adipurāna, 38.45.
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