Jaina Political Thought

Author(s): G C Pandey
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

Page 14

APPROACH
By Jaina political thought I mean political thought consistent with the basic principles of Jaina religion and philosophy. The political ideas expressed in avowedly political works by Jaina authors claim to belong to this category but do not exhaust it. Reflection on political reality and ideals in the light of the Jaina tradition indeed constitutes an inexhaustible vein because it includes within itself creative possibilities.
It may be objected that my definition of Jaina political thought is too wide. A good deal of political thought being purely secular and technical would be consistent with Jainism or for the matter of that with any religion. Managerial science, for example, is as compatible with Jainism as is statistics. It would be as farcical to call it Jaina as it would be to call it Christian or Muslim. In this sense modern political thought would scorn to be called Jaina or denominational in any manner since it would like to be classed with the sciences of value-neutral nature.
This objection really springs from a conception of political science which is itself incompatible with the principles of Jainism or any other system of religion and ethics. All religions contain within themselves basic and seminal political conceptions none of which allow our understanding of political reality to be reducible to a merely technical comprehension. This follows from the fact that these basic political conceptions reach us as elements embedded in systems of faiths and carrying with them a force and authority which goes beyond the mere recognition of factual constraints or the persuasiveness of mere reason. All religions conceive man as a moral and spiritual source. None or few of them conceive the life of the state as independent of moral faith, or, on the other hand, as the highest kind of life for man. As a consequence, any purely formalisticor positivistic conceptions of political theory would tend to be irreligious. It is an essential principle of all religions that the wisdom which enables men to resolve the problems and conflicts of practical life and mutual relations can never be adequately supplied by merely empirical knowledge or natural reason. The theory of politics as the authoritative and over-all management of social life, thus,