Keynote Address of Dr Sagarmal Jain at Calcutta

Author(s): Mahadeolal Saraogi
Publisher: Mahadeolal Saraogi

Page 16

religious traditions of our great Indian Culture have borrowed various concepts from one another, So it is the duty of a researchers of this Institute to study and highlight this mutual impact which is the need of the hour and thus bridge the gulf that exists between different religious systems. Because this Institute is established after
Sri Ramakrishna, who had worked all the time in theory and practice for bridging the gulf between the religions, it is postulated to be the bounden duty of the Institute. If we want to give a concrete shape to the dream, which Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda had seen, this type of inter-religious studies should be undertaken with an unbiased attitude and religious religious devolution,
So to say.
Though it is true that
Sramanic tradition in general and Jainism and Buddhism in particular have some distinct features, discriminating them from Vedic or Brahmanic tradition,
yet they are not alien faiths. They are the children of same soil, came forward with
reformative spirit. It
is just by a mistake. in notion that it is thought that Jainism and Buddhism were a revolt against Brahmanism. The Western scholars have been particular in highlighting this view. But here I would like to say that it was not a revolt but a reformer's crusade. In fact Vedic and Sramanic traditions are not rival traditions as some of the Western and Indian Scholars think. There seem to have been a deliberate effort to creat a gulf between Jainism and Buddhism on one hand and Hinduism on the other, by Western Scholars. Unfortunately, some Indian scholars even Jain scholars also supported this point of their views, but in my humble opinion this was a false step taken in a wrong direction.
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