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Activities of Jain Religion in the Last Century Mission, Aliganj in Uttar Pradesh is responsible for the pioneering work of influencing and admitting westerners to the Jain religion.
The Jain settlers from India were mostly professionalsengineers, physicians and professors. Most of these early settlers in effect had come under the influence of the World Jain Mission and its founder, late Dr. Kamata Prasad Jain, who had started spreading Jainism among interested intellectuals around the world.
The numerical strength of Jain settlers in North America provided an impetus to an array of activities in Jain communities across North America. Many Jain organisations came into existence and they warranted religious directions and guidance in practising the Jain way of life based on the teaching of the Tirthankaras. The Jain communities espoused all the basic tenets preached in the tradition by the Jain saints of post Mahavira era. This is unique of Jains in North America, it could be heralded as the great Renaissance in the Jain religion to bring about harmony, fraternity and fundamental integration in socio-religious structure of Jainism.
The force of Jain communities in North America paved the way for many Jain monks, nuns, Bhattarakas, scholars to visit their communities in order to bring awareness to the Jain consciousness.
Cataloguing the achievements, consolidating and characterising them with organisational functions and publicising them, need an array of individual volunteers and institutions. A monolithic task it is to channelise the strength of the interested individuals into a cohesive force of an organisation. In this direction it has been a successful story.
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