Lessons of Ahimsa and Anekanta for Contemporary Life

Author(s): Tara Sethia
Publisher: California State Polytechnic University Pomona

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Introduction
TARA SETHIA California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
The year 2001-2002 marked the twenty-sixth birth centenary year of Vardhamana Mahāvīra (529-527 BCE), the twenty-fourth Tirthankara and propagator of Jainism as we know today. Many places in India and around the world celebrated the year as the "ahimsā year” to commemorate Mahāvīra's total adherence to ahimsā (nonviolence).
Such celebrations of ahimsā could not have been more timely. In the very first year of this century, we witnessed the unimaginable destruction of life on September 11, which in turn resulted in retaliation, war and loss of more lives. Violence led to more violence. And as the second year of this century is drawing to its close, we see looming large the shadow of war and the threat of biological and nuclear weapons.
Today people are becoming increasingly conscious of their distinctive identity not only in terms of race and ethnicity but also in terms of cultural traditions and religious beliefs. While such consciousness of one's heritage and a sense of pride in it serves as
The Jain tradition holds that every Tirthankara "reanimates this ever present imperishable tradition." See Padmanabh S. Jaini, The Jaina Path of Purification (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), p. 2.
Although the Jains regard ahimsā as the virtue of all virtues, "ahimsă parmodharmah," the Jain countribution to the origin and evolution of this principle remains underrepresented in the scholarly literature, which makes only occasional reference to the Jain sources. See Christopher Key Chapple, Nonviolence to Animals, Earth, and Self in Asian Traditions (New York: SUNY Press, 1993), p. 5.