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Anekânta & Building a New Society
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opportunity to develop. It is on this basis that everyone in a democracy has the right to become President, Prime Minister etc. What limits this right is individual excellence or quality. High offices can be manned only by those people who have a highly developed intellectual and administrative competence. Nature has plenty to offer. A democracy can be given a healthy base only by appreciating element of both identicallity and disparateness. Jayacharya, the fourth Acharya of the Swetambar Jain Terapanth Order, applied a harmonious combination of the general and the specific on the basis of Anekānta in dealing with the Terapanth Religious Order. As a result the Order kept progressing constantly and avoided being embroiled in mutual conflicts. The above positive viewpoint remains an ideal to this day. Once Jaiprakash Narayan told Acharya Tulsi, “Your Order is a perfect example of socialism. What is needed is that it should now percolate down to each individual throughout society." Anekānta and Economic Policy Now and again one hears everywhere that violence is increasing day by day. Why is it so? The factors responsible for the increase have also been investigated from time to time. Of the many causes put forward the most prominent is economic greed which is engendered by a false or perverse conception. It consists in the belief that one's capital should be enhanced through borrowing with the illogical assumption
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