Studies in Jainism

Author(s): Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture Culcutta
Publisher: Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture Culcutta

Page 118

REFLECTIONS ON ANUVRATA
109
The ancient idealists, both in the west and in the East, decreed that the means should be as noble as the end itself. For this reason social sciences like politics were a part of the broader śāstra of Ethics. It was Florentine Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) who effected the separation between politics and Ethics in the West, holding that success alone counted in politics, not virtue.
Because of the spread of the thesis - Machiavellism, as Edmund Burka lamented: gone are the days of 'the statesmen, and those of sophists, calculators and economists had arrived'. In our own country the codified Rajadharma of Manu, Sukrācārya, as also of Kautilya had been modified to make room for statism and politics, which is called a policy-science.
In modern times Mahatma Gandhi sought to recapture the ethical penumbra by emphasizing the noble ends should .be sought to be achieved through noble means alone – success should be discounted to the extent of ignominy of the means. (And Mahatma Gandhi was a Jaina in outlook and attitude).
To the Aņuvrati purity of the means should be an article of his faith. He shall have to take the small vow of being faithful to the principle of purity, which is equated with truth. Purity should permeate the total behaviour of the Asurati. Thus, winning an election, passing an examination, getting a contract or a job should be purity-tinged. In this way, it comes to coalesce with behaviour - it is indeed an aspect of behaviourism. The Aņuvrata document of course mentions truthfulness as a separate category which goes alongwith fearlessness and objectivity.
It is rather difficult to put these values in the same conceptual system. Truthfulness and fearlessness may well go together, but how can objectivity be conjucted with them? The first two speak of facets of the state of mind, that is to say, they are essentially subjective in character, while objectivity refers to externalities. Can really a tangible synthesis be made of internal objectives with an external value?:
Perhaps the fashioners of the doctrine of small vows