Mahavira and his Teaching

Author(s): C C Shah, Rishabhdas Ranka, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: Bhagwan Mahavir 2500th Nirvan Mahotsava Samiti

Page 154

JAINISM AND WESTERN INFLUENCES ON GANDHIJI
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always remained confined to limits and have never attempted to proselytize beyond the boundaries of India. However, the Jains had intensified their principles and inspite of the small number of followers gained an important influence on their environments. Jain monks are not an unusual sight on the roads of India, especially in Gujarat. They are only allowed to walk and are not permitted to use other means of transport. They may wander only by daylight, in order to avoid the unconscious killing of small animals in the dark. With a small switch, which they carry with them constantly, they brush aside insects from their path. Before their mouths some of them wear a mask to refrain from breathing in insects and thus endangering life. These white clad figures are the uncompromising apostles of ahimsā. The intensive contact with them laid the foundations in the child's soul for the growth of the ideal of ahimsā which was to take the central position in Gandhi's Weltanschauung and practice of life. Moreover, there was yet another occasion when Jainism played a major role in Gandhiji's life. It deals with the decisive resolve to go to London for further studies. This was, in those days, not a normal thing for students from Kathiawar. But Mohandas over-came all obstacles with the tenacity, which in his own words, the banas have. As the family had lost the father, it took the advice of friends regarding the choice of professions. Gandhiji himself would have loved to have become a medical doctor, but he was told that Vaishnavas should not deal with dead corpses. So as to follow in the footsteps of his father, who had succeeded in gaining the highest office in the state, the son
1 to study law in the most efficient and fastest way in England. His uncle, the highest authority in the family, was not sure whether it was possible for somebody studying in England to do so without harming his religion. After all that he had heard, he was doubtful of this. He remembered the fat lawyers with whom he had to deal and saw no difference between them and the Europeans in their way of life. They had no scruples regarding the purity of food, the cigars were never removed from their mouths, they clad themselves as Englishmen without