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Jains Living Outside India
199 on that was a religion bad known till then.
The second great event was the sending by Ācārya Vijayananda of a great Jain activist, Virchand Raghav Gandhi, as his delegate to the "Parliament of Religions” in Chicago (USA) in 1893. V. R. Gandhi made a so brilliant contribution to the debates that all attendants to that international meeting showed a great interest for the Jainism as religion of nonviolence, tolerance, respect of nature, peace and mutual assistance towards all living beings. V. R. Gandhi made also travels to England and USA where some people became his disciples. He went also to Oxford and Cambridge universities and was the first Jain to qualify as Barrister in London. Unfortunately, he died in England at the age of 37.
A third important event was, at the beginning of the XXth century AD, the progress made in the knowledge of Jainism due to Acārya Vijayadhanna Sūri and Ācārya Vijyananda Sūri who opened their "bhandāras” (libraries) to searchers. So, scholars and searchers published articles, books, and made courses on Jain philosophy and religion in Western universities. Nevertheless, Jainism remained quite unknown by a large public in the countries where no family practicing such worship had decided to migrate, essentially due the facts that other religions ruled, like Islam, Buddhism and Roman Catholicism or English language was not or little spoken.
In the second half of the XXth century, some Jain families went from India to England and North America due to three factors: social and economics conditions in India, opening of Commonwealth immigration into Great Britain and removal of measures against the immigration of Asians in the legislations of the USA and Canada. So, Jain families established in England were soon joined by those expelled after the dramatic events in 1967-68 in Tanzania and in 1970-71 in Ugandalo.
To help the needs of Jain communities living outside India, a number of organisations were created as well in Kenya, than in UK and North America. In 1966, late Professor Narendra Sethi and some others Jain lay leaders established in the State of New-York a first Jain Centre at Elmhurst". In 1971, Shri Gurudev Chitrabhanu (Pl. 26.1), came in USA and created the "Jain Centre of Boston”. In 1973 was founded in Leicester (UK) the association "Jain Samaj” to develop religious, social, cultural and educational activities. In 1975, Shr Gurudev Chitrabhanu created in New York the “Jain Meditation International Centre”12 that played a great role in the establishment of numerous families from India in Canada and USA. The same year, Ācārya Sushil Kumar, a great Shvetāmbara religious master, came in North America from India to propagate the ethics of Jain religion, peace, non-violence, tolerance and vegetarianism and to support the families who successively established themselves in these countries and formed religious communities?
On the 3rd and 4th of October 1981, under the management of Shri Satish Kumar Jain, Secretary General of “Ahimsā International in New Delhi and the help of various lay Jain leaders, was held in New-York the "First International Jain Conference"!3. The same year was created the Federation of Jain Associations in North America" (JAINA) with as main
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