Vaishali Institute Research Bulletin 1

Author(s): Nathmal Tatia
Publisher: Research Institute of Prakrit Jainology & Ahimsa Mujjaffarpur

Page 239

VAISHALI INSTITUTE RESEARCH BULLETIN NO. I
contained by law, if moral persuasion fails. But if the rich man employs his wealth for the amelioration of the poorer sections one should have nothing but admiration for him. After all everybody cannot gain money or save a capital. America is rich because she has been able to exploit the available resources and bring advanced scientific knowledge to bear upon it. Nature has favoured her and she has developed the capacity for turning it to account. Let each nation do its best and solve the problem of poverty. This will alleviate the distress of the common herd and take the wind out of the sails of the modern apostles of violence. Curiously enough this cult of violence of inevitable class-struggle has received the imprimatur of powerful nations. But unless there is a change in the human character and the aptitude for judicious use of one's income is developed, the prospect of the betterment of the lot of general mankind by division of wealth executed by force or law will recede farther. The ethics of the Jainas and other Indian schools of thought has therefore laid stress on the necessity of setting limits to one's possessions (parigraha). It will be no solution if the tables are turned on the capitalists. The enrichment of the proletariat at the impoverishment of the capitalists will only bring about the same problem in another form. The state and the individual must not lack in their exertion to bring about a state of affairs in which every man who is capable of work does his duty without grumble and has enough of creature comforts.
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We have alluded to this economic problem because it has serious repercussions on the moral field. Our concept of ahimsa must not be negative, but fulfil itself in rendering necessary help to those who want it. Our charity must not encourage idleness, but end in helping others to stand on their own feet. The rich man must shed his love of wealth for its own sake or for the satisfaction of vanity. But economic betterment is not the be-all and the end-all. Only if it serves as the scaffolding to intellectual, moral and spiritual elevation, it will serve a real need. Different men are born with different capacities and it is necessary that each man should have a suitable field for the development of his powers. Each one of us has to be taught the salutary lesson that the individual and the community are integrally connected and each must help the other. The individual must not be sacrificed at the altar of supposed communal well-being, nor should the interests of the community be ignored or frustrated in the pursuit of individual uplift. What is more important than distribution of wealth is the growth and development of charitable disposition. The intellectually superiors must help those who are intellectually backward. The morally degraded sections should be won over by the