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International School for Jain Studies One of the major initiatives taken up by some of the Jain associations in North America and the U. K. in 2005 was the beginning of the International Summer School for the Jain Studies that is organized at various places in India and Thailand. The participants include faculty members as well as graduate students from universities of US, UK, Poland, Canada, Singapore, Thailand and Philippines. The programme is supervised by a joint Indo-American Academic Council, presently chaired by Professor Cromwell Crawford of the Department of Religion and Philosophy at the University of Hawaii, USA.
The International School for Jain Studies provides an important link between the Jain community and the academic world. The Jain community despite its small number has, and continues to have, a large impact on Indian religious, social and cultural life. The academic study of Jainism is still an underdeveloped area of research. The spirit of the ISSJS is to work towards rectifying this omission in scholarly inquiry by fostering an interest in Jainism in universities around the world.
ISSJS programmes are run by International School for Jain Studies, a project of Mahavir Vision Inc, a non-profit organisation. ISJS works in collaboration with Academic Studies of Jainism in North America (ASJNA), World Council of Jain Academies (WCJA) and Jain Academic Foundation of North America (JAFNA), University of Ottawa, American Institute of Indian Studies and Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute (SICI), Calgary and New Delhi.
ISSJS programmes were started in 2005 with only seven scholars. Since then about 200 participants have benefitted by attending these programmes in seven annual summer programmes. The participants came from twenty five universities of the world. In April 2009 and May 2010 the ISSJS programmes were also organized at Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand.
A series of about ten seminars on the theme “Social Consciousness in Jain Religion” have been organised by the School at different cities in India and Ottawa, Canada during the year 2010. In 2010
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Jains in India and Abroad
