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The Path of Arhat: A Religious Democracy
each Jiva has a continuing consciousness through all the different lives and that each of these Jivas is entitled to progress in its own way. It is no logic to say that we have no obligation to safe-guard the life and identity of all the Jivas of the universe, because if any such reasoning prevails, none of us would have any justification to complain against the domination of the strong over the weak. In other words, ours would be the universe where only the fittest and the strongest would have the right to survive. It would be, what we call a law of jungle, where our own existence would be precarious. Any such social order as amongst the human beings would not be tolerated by us. If that is so, all the living beings of the universe should be governed by the same rule by which human beings would like to be governed.
Prof. S. Gopalan1 cites Eliot on this subject as under : "Eliot exhibits a clear understanding of Jaina view of nonviolence when he writes: 'the beautiful precept of Ahimsa or not injuring living things is not, as Europeans imagine, founded on the fear of eating ones grand parents but rather on the humane and enlightening feeling that all life is one and that men who devour beasts are not much above the level of beasts who devour one another."
Dr. Radhakrishnan2 writing on Hinduism rightly observes : "All life is sacred, whether of animals or of fellow men. We shudder at cannibalism and condemn the savage who wishes to indulge in this habit of our ancestors, though the slaughtering of animals and birds for human consumption continues to be regarded as right....... The true man is he in whom the mere pleasure of killing is killed. So long as it is there, man has no claim to call himself civilized."
The German philosopher Schopenhauer has put it more emphatically in the coming words.
1. S. Gopalan : Outlines of Jainism, p. 161.
2. Dr. Radhakrishnana, S.: Cultural History of India (Oxford), p. 75.
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