Book Title: Studies in Jainism
Author(s): Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture Culcutta
Publisher: Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture Culcutta
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REFLECTIONS ON AŅUVRATA
105 Vedanta, which is regarded as the summit of Indian Philosophical thoughts. Swami Vivekananda brought it from forests and recluses and gave it a practical bent. His Practiral Vedanta was directed only to the humankind. The prophet(s) of Anurata have done the same. Unity is an ideal that does not find place in the Ideas of 1793, popularly called the French Revolutionary Slogan. It came to be incorporated later in the Socio-Political-Economic thought, notwithstanding thinking internationally by a many before. It was after the devastating World War II that the unity of mankind came to be emphasized. Humanists perceived that unless we h planned our civilization, we would perish. The Anuvrata is only a reiteration of the perception.
Co-existence is a corollary of the unity of mankind. It is also another way of expressing the principle of 'Live and let Live'. perhaps it can be extended to the entire sentiment of creation, for its informing spirit is that man cannot live by all alone. In modern time it has taken the form of ecological balance. Aņuvrata in fact emphasizes this equipoise. The entire nature is dependent on counter-balancing forces. Can human life be isolated from this fundamental principle? Anuvrat's answer is an emphatic 'No'.
Communal harmony is related to what Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) describes as 'unsocial sociableness'. The Greek philosophers, particularly Aristotle, asserted that man is a social animal, by which they meant that in his essential nature man is a gregarious animal - the instinct of associativeness is the most important driving force for him. Kant modifies the idea a bit, holding that innate sociableness of man is inextricably mixed with his pugnacity. For he is egotistic, too, in his essential nature. This trait of his character-egotism find expression inter alia in religious exclusivism-making, in the words of Alexandar Pope, "Heaven's gate a lock to his (one's) own key". Religious conflicts naturally arise which annihilates human sociableness.
Besides, it becomes a flat denial of the fundamental ideal of the unity of mankind. In a multi-religious country the problem assume serious proportions. Even where one single
