Book Title: Jainism And Its History
Author(s): Sagarmal Jain
Publisher: Research Foundation for Jainology

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Page 274
________________ of high class, affluent families lead a luxurious life, greatly influenced by materialism of modem culture. It is rather difficult to imagine that their children will keep away from materialism. On the contrary, it is seen that such youngsters develop many undesirable habits and behaviours. First, such families are adopting non-vegetarianism and using intoxicating drinks, thus moving away from good, healthy &clean diet. Secondly, their untamed desires have put a question mark on the purity of their character. Thirdly, because of the greed for money, the reliability and simplicity of their lives is being eroded. It is evident that such atmosphere is not conducive to the building of good character of children. If the parents spend much of their time in offices, parties and clubs, and the children are left in the care of servants and baby-sitters, they lose intimacywith their children. Thus, how can their children be expected to learn culture values? This also applies to the children of working parents. In many cases, the character traits developed by such children are of the servants and babysitters and not of the parents. Many people send their youngsters to Western-style boarding schools so that their children may not come in the way of their indulgence or they may not pick up the undesirable habits and conduct of their parents. In this context the couplet written by an Urdu poet seems to be appropriate: Tifl men boo aai kyaa ma baap ke itwaar ki Doodh to dabbe ka hai, taleem hai sarkar ki How can an offspring adopt the faith of the parents? He is given canned milk and (British) government's education. We cannot depend on others to instill our culture and traditions in our children. If parents want their children to imbibe the sound and health, features of our ancient Indian culture, they will have to lead a clean life of self Jainism and its History | 272

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