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APPENDIX - III
Letter to the Prime Minister of India Requesting the Enactment of Separate Jain Marriage Act
Hon'ble Shri Manmohan Singh Prime Minister of India 7, Race Course Road New Delhi
Hon'ble Shri Manmohan Singh Ji, Sub: Enactment of JAIN MARRIAGE ACT- Request for
With due respect we have the honour to submit herewith the following facts for your kind perusal and consideration and passing necessary orders on the subject of Enactment of a separate JAIN MARRIAGE ACT so that the followers of Jain Religion may register their marriage under the proposed Jain Marriage Act instead of Hindu Marriage Act as done at the moment. We have very solid grounds for saying so which are based on the following amongst other grounds:
2.
That Sir, Jainism is an important, fully developed and well-established religious and cultural system, purely indigenous to India and totally different from Hinduism. It has been proved beyond doubt that Jainism is different from Hinduism and that Hindu Law is not applicable on the Jain Community. That Sir, many states in India including Delhi, West Bengal etc have declared Jain community as religious minority community and as such the Hindu Marriage Act should not be applicable on the Jain Community. That Sir, Late Sri Jawaharlal Nehru, the erstwhile Prime Minister of India has mentioned in his famous book "Discovery of India" that Jainism is different from Hinduism. He further states that with our present knowledge of Jainas and their sacred literature, it is not difficult to prove that Jainism, far from being an offshoot of Buddhism or Brahmanism, was one of the earliest home religions of India. That Sir, Dr. Hermann Jacobi and others are also of the opinion that Jainism was related to the primitive philosophy of India, because of certain of its metaphysical conceptions, animistic beliefs, rituals or morals.
149 Jains in India and Abroad
