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THE JAINA GAZETTE every year. We can afford to lose a sacred place but not 6935 Jainas in a year. Whai is the earthly use of a religion or a sacred place without followers and worshippers. Let the sacred places take care of themselves ; let us use our mind and money for the propagation of our religion and for the conversion of those, who are willing to enter our fold. If we are true followers of our Lord Mahavira we should understand the true spirit of the ten dharma and practise th:m without any fault. May the heart of every living being be the shrine of Utlama Kshama.
Are the Indian people happy ? That which affects the whole, affects the part also. The Jains form an important part of the Indian Nation and so that which affects the Indian Nation as a whole affects the Jaina community also. We invite the attention of our readers to the instructive essay on "What is India?" by Dr. N. S. Hardiker. It reveals to us the actual status of the Indian people as compared with that of the other important nations of the world. The average income of an Indian is Rs. 2-8-0 per month; the average length of life of an Indian is 24:7 years; the mortality rate is 30 per thousand; the infant mortality in India is 194 per thousand and in industrial cities like Bombay it is 634 per thousand. This is enough to open our eyes and show to us the actual condition of our people.
What may be the cause of the abject poverty of our people ? There is not enough work for our poor men and women who live in the villages. During the season when they had no work on the lands they used to spin and weave their own clothes in their own homes. But now-a-days the mill-made and foreign clothes have found their way into the remote villages and deprived the people of the necessity to spin and weave and made them sit idle. Even the husking of grains which was formerly done by the people in their own homes is now done by the mills. The modern civilisation has contributed not a little to impoverish our people. It has polluted every function of our daily life. Our people want tooth-paste and tooth-brush to clean their teeth, they want a French or a German soap to bathe, colfee, tea or
cocoa to break the fast, biscuits and Ovaltine for lunch, foreign Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
