World Of Jainism

Author(s): Vishwanath Pandey
Publisher: Vishwanath Pandey

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THE ORIENT
accept alms at the hands of Chandana whom he thought to be a woman of purity, though the people had their own unfounded doubts about it. He thus cleared her of the infamous charge levelled against her.
Side by side, I would also like readers to take due not of the scathing and uncharitable invective to be found in Gunapalas Jambucariyam against woman. In it he says with vehemence that the female of the species is more deadly than the male. Woman's love, he avers, is writ in water and her faith is traced in sand. He condemns them as bad-natured. As if to complete his charge-sheet, he alleges that they can conviently be hardhearted and also soft; that they are frailty incarnate, and that their minds cannot be known and heartsfully compassed and comprehended. And he lays the last brick when he bemoans that they can go to any length when they want to satisfy their carnal desires".
All the religious system of the East, and especially Jainism, had been unkind, more or less, to woman, the reason being their frivolity, frailty and innate capacity to arouse passion in man. Now it is a question of outlook whether or not these traits should be taken as natural to their very constitution of body and mind. The East is unwilling to compromise on this point while the West is poised to forgive and be forgiven. The male is unable to face the music or would shy away when the female counter-alleges that it is the male that has kept her suppressed so far. And who can deny the force of her logic? Given recognition and scope she could have certainly risen to the dizzy heights of development and progress like man and it is given to woman only to shine in grandeur more brilliantly than man in her sublime self-sacrifice. She has shown and the history points that she can excel man in any field of human activity under the sun. Now this is sufficient to prove that woman also like man has got infinite potentiality which she can bring to bear fruit given the opportunity. The onus of proving his own bonafides falls on man. If the woman is frailty incarnate and frivolous, what is man, then? If the the woman has the capacity to cash her beatuty and grace and charm in terms of physical happiness, why should the man fall a victim to it? It is no crime of the woman if she is so designed as she is. On no ground the attitude of any religious system, much less Jainism, that woman is a gateway leading to hell, is defensible. It is an inhuman approach to the whole problem. To say that weal h and woman are the main hurdles and handicaps hindering the man in his spiritual pursuits and progress is as absurd and ridiculous as a .carpenter finding faults with his tools. But it is said that if any religious system has condemned a woman it is not for all her feminine beauty and for all that but for her designs on man. Well, the wind of change is sweeping our globe and the sooner