Samajonnayak Krantikari Yugpurush Bramhachari Shitalprasad

Author(s): Jyotiprasad Jain
Publisher: Akhil Bharatvarshiya Digambar Jain Parishad

Page 83

76 K. B. JAINARAJA HEGGEDE I knew Brahmachariji since my student days at Benaras. The Syadvada Mahavidyalaya owes a great deal to his efforts. He a great social reformer but he was neither aggressive nor offensive like many of that class and his benevolent activities have laid a path for many others to follow. In his social activities he met with good amount of opposition, but his perseverance, patience and honesty of purpose endeared him even to his enemies. His simple needs and his austere living are examples to. all public workers. He lived to preserve the Jains and their religion during the surge of materialism. The community wants more saviours of that type. L. JAGAT PRASAD C. I. E. I met Brahmachariji for the first time in Bombay, when he was a plain youngman with no pretensions to scholarship or holiness, but filled with an earnest desire to devote his life to the service of the Jaina society and religion. He had been attracted to Bombay by the personality of the late Seth Manakchand whose practical work I think he inspired to a large extent. (Later) my interest in him was aroused mainly on reading his commentary on the Samayasra of Kunda-Kunda Acharya. This book resolved most of the doubts and difficulties I had felt about the Jaina doctrine, and I began to look upon Brahmachariji as my guru in spirit. He stands high as a scholar of course, but his writings have a deeper appeal than that of a mere scholarship It is the appeal of a man who has had a glimpse of reality, an anubhavi. A holyman in the best sense of the word, he was also deeply human, and full of sympathy for weaker vessels. On one occasion when he expressed satisfaction at my interest in the study of Jainism, I began to talk of my faults, and he stopped me saying, "Who among us is free from faults ? Do you consider me free from faults, ? No, but when a man