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THE JAINA GAZETTE.
communities of India. The percentage of educated members of the community also ranks very high. Inspite of all these advantages however we are not a compact and vigorous body, say like the Sikhs, Parsis or the Anglo-Indians. This is the humiliating position, to remedy which every patriotic Jain should earnestly strive.
In the keen struggle for existence now-a-days our complacent indifference towards politics borders on suicide. The urgent need to organize and stand for our own is either not felt or is being deliberately neglected. Either way it means the loss of prestige and power which is sapping the very foundations of our existence as a distinct community. The less a representative demand is made by the leaders of the community from all over the country, the Government of India is not going to grant us the political rights and privileges which have been conceded to other communities. The demand must be kept up to prove its sincerity and earnestness. Spasmodic efforts will hardly go far to achieve the objective. Government has rightly admitted that we are one of the “important minorities " for political purposes. This fair indication alone should serve to assure us that Government would be favourably inclined towards the legitimate political aspirations of our community. It is of course an imperative necessity for us to take a keener interest in contemporary politics rather than shun it as a bugbear. Not that we should plunge into reactionary tendencies against the Government-luckily we are too level headed a people for that, but there seems to be no good reason why we should not study our political position in its proper perspective and devise the best possible means for our advancement. At present we are simply stagnating. No extraneous force will come to our aid, unless we help ourselves. The onward march of modern civilization will continue, laggards notwithstanding.
The trouble is that the majority of us are fearfully conservative as well as egotistic. We have moved in and swayed a world of our own—a stationary world with neither knowledge nor imagination of another just without our closed doors, a big world which swings forward through vast reaches of progress from year to year.
There seems to be no political consciousness in us. This is the Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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