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THE JAINS AND PALITANA. (Leading Article, "Bombay Chronicle"
June 19, 1926.)
The case of the Jain community against the Palitana Durbar's unwarrantable exactions has been presented with force and conviction in these columns in a series of special articles from the pen of Mr. Makanji J. Mehta, Barrister-atlaw, a leading young Jain of this city. The questions, however, raised by the dispute are not parochial in any sense of the term. If the precedent is established by the Thakore of Palitana being permitted to violate the spirit as well as the letter of his centuries' old agreement with the Jain community, the sufferers will not be the Jains of all India only, but the religiouslyinclined Indians all over the country. To discuss the main issue, viz., the right of a tributary State to tax, by means of an inherently iniquitous and objectionable demand, not only his own immediate “subjects," but also the entire community professing a particular faith, is in no way to prejudice the particular issues to be raised at Abu on Monday befoie the Agent to the Governor-General in the Western India States. We shall not enter into a discussion, for the present, of the Jain contention regarding their sovereignty or full ownership over the Hill and
