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demographic stagnation and eventual decline in the long run and the Jains appear to follow the same trend.
Political Status Being mainly engaged in business and professions and thereby being economically well-off the Jains appear to have little time or desire for entering the field of active politics. At least this has been so for the past few decades. A large number of Jains vigorously participated in India's national independence movement. Whereas thousands of Jains went to jails all over India as freedom fighters during the first half of the 20th century, at least 20 of them were hanged to death by the British for their varying acts of patriotism (Jain 2006). As Prof. Sangave (1980: 355) put it,
In the Non-Co-operation Movement of 1919 many Jains left the Government service or abandoned the legal practice and in the 1942 struggle the Jaina students who lived together became the nerve centres of revolution. In supplying finance to national movements the contributions of Jainas, it is clearly mentioned, was greater as compared to their number in the country. Those who could not participate directly did contribute in an indirect manner. The Jains are intensely national and they whole-heartedly supported the Indian National Congress. It must be remembered that even though they form a small minority community they never demanded for them specific rights like separate electorate or reservation of seats in Assemblies.
After India's independence, six Jains, namely Mr. Ajit Prasad Jain (Saharanpur, UP), Mr. Balwantsinha Mehta(Udaipur, Rajasthan), Mr. R. L. Malviya (Sagar, MP), Mr. Bhawani Arjun Khimji (Kutchha, Gujarat), Mr. Chimanbhai C. Shah (Saurashtra, Gujarat) and Mr. Kusumkant Jain (Indore, MP) were members of the Constituent Assembly of India. A small number of Jains were politically active in initial decades after independence. Thus there were 35 Jain members in the first Parliament of India comprising the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha. This number got progressively reduced to the extent that in the current parliament there are only three Jain members in the Lok Sabha, and two in the Rajya Sabha. The reasons
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Jains in India and Abroad
