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Jainism – A Familyhood of all
Religions Kaka Kalelkar
The very history of India has evolved a grand mission for our country. Ours is, perhaps the earliest and the longest history of humanity. People of different races have come here and settled. None of them were kept outside; nor did we easily mix with them freely. The same is true about the religions and the various languages that we have.
In our own generation, people like Dr. R. G. Bhandarkar, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Swami Dayand and others tried to solve the problems of this multi-religious country. These pioneers of our culture tried to evolve a synthesis that would be good for our people. Gandhiji, through his ashram, developed and spread the idea of familyhood of all races, religions and nations. He was modest enough to declare through his ashram, that we believe in equality of all religions. He wanted to avoid rivalry and antagonism amongst the religions that have come to stay in this land. His formula was Sarvadharma Samabhava–equality of all religions.
With Gandhiji's permission, I made it into SarvadharmaMamabhava, meaning thereby that it was not enough that we should merely accept the equality of all religions; our people should accept them as our own in a general way. I, naturally, tried to explain this idea that all religions are our own' in our way. I was anxious to declare that we should not associate ourselves with the rivalry and antipathy started by the followers of proselytising religions. Therefore, I evolved or rather modified Gandhiji's Sarvadharma Samabhava into SarvadharmaKutumbabhava, meaning that all great religions of the world deserve to live together as one family. Christianity for instance accepted Judaism as its old Testament and the teachings of Jesus formed the New Testament. Similarly we at one time were one family of religious beliefs under the common name of the Vedas. Then came Buddhism and Jainism. These systems were not prepared to accept the authority of the Vedas. Buddhism and Jainism were called nastika, in the sense that they did not accept the over all authority of the Vedas. Jainism accepted the existence of Soul. Buddhism would not even do that. There arose some doctrinal differences even in these systems. Every exponent tried to prove the philosophical and spiritual superiority of his system. This rivalry in India being on the intellectual
