Sramana 2016 01

Author(s): Shreeprakash Pandey, Rahulkumar Singh, Omprakash Singh
Publisher: Parshvanath Vidhyashram Varanasi

Page 63

56 : Śramaņa, Vol 67, No. 1, January-March 2016 Even the inhuman behaviour with black people in the west by the white people is really cruel. The whites don't consider blacks as one among them in present united states. They are deprived from certain privileges of the country, certain professions etc. The kids of black people were not admitted in the convent schools where white people's kids study. Although civil rights movement occurred against their discrimination, still a kind of segregation is prevailing. Moreover white people community stay in particular area and rich white people live in highly crowded area, they don't stay together. Even policemen too misbehave with black people. All these because of difference of skin colour, only change of perspective can do away this problem. So let us recognize that to be human doesn't require anything but only love, affection, compassions for all human brothers and feeling for sufferings of others.
Women Discrimination
Women in Jainism:
Jainism that started, maybe during the 6th century B.C. or perhaps even earlier according to some sources clearly states that all men and women are spiritually equal and that women too are capable of salvation. Both men and women may renounce the world. The story of the 19th Tīrthankara Mallinātha Deva, clearly shows that it is possible for a woman to become a Tīrthankara. In Jainism, the codes of ethics - non-violence, truth, non-stealing, purity of body and soul and non-possessiveness are common to men and women. At the time of Mahāvīra (6th-5th-century B.C.) there were no sects in Jainism. Only later, sects like Digambaras, Svetāmbaras etc. came into existence. Digambaras insist on nudity and declare that a mendicant must renounce all property including clothes, the only exception being a small whiskbroom for brushing insects and a water gourd. They argue that Mahāvīra himself was a naked monk but say that renunciation of clothes is not mandatory. Thus, clothes came to occupy a central position in the debates on possible salvation of women. This barred women in the Digambara sect from attaining