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it is for you young scholars to take the material and give it shape, so that in 8 weeks it begins to looks life a temple of learning. One thing about Indian temples - they are never finished, so you have unwittingly made this summer programe into a life-long project!
Let me tell you a secret about India, and I speak as one whose British family came to these shores in 1761: you may leave India, but India will never leave you. For better or for worse, you are stuck! You will return home, taking India to Montreal, to Vermont, to California, and to Hawaii. What will be the consequences? For one thing: Jainism is an ancient religion, yet it is a religion struggling to be born - born among new people and places, propitious to its myriad potentialities. Who knows - the next Mahāvīra may be sitting in this' class!
To members of the Jain community assembled here you who are proud possessors of one of the most ancient traditions known to humankind: your sacred duty now is to hand over the riches of your tradition. What is tradition? According to G. K. Chesterton, it is giving votes to our ancestors. “It is the democracy of the dead." That is true for many religious people. They cling to tradition as something, which has been perfected in the past and must never suffer change. Tradition then becomes a form of salvation by ossification. Their tradition is a clock, which tells what time it, was.
The correct meaning of the word tradition is fascinating. It comes from the Latin word tradere, "to hand over. "On the one hand it evokes rich images of personal, institutional, and social achievements of the past; on the other it points to new development and continuity in the future. In this sense tradition is a living social process, constantly changing, constantly in need of criticism, but constant also as the continuing value system of a society.
Sisters and brothers, at this Inauguration, by lighting the flame of knowledge by which the history, philosophy and culture of Jainism will be studied, you are taking the tradition of learning handed over
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