Lessons of Ahimsa and Anekanta for Contemporary Life

Author(s): Tara Sethia
Publisher: California State Polytechnic University Pomona

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Religious Dissonance and Reconciliation: The Haribhadra Story
CHRISTOPHER KEY CHAPPLE Loyola Marymount University
During this somewhat unsettled period following the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 and the real possibility of a catastrophic show down between United States and Iraq, it is interesting and perhaps instructive to review how Jains have grappled with their alterity, their difference, their otherness. From the non-Jain accounts found in the early Buddhist records, the Jains appear to be stand-apart people, distinguished by their eating habits, their lay occupations, and the austere life-style observed by members of their mendicant orders. Yet, rather than being reviled and suppressed, Jains for the most part have managed to survive with respect to their non-Jain colleagues except for occasional calamitous outburst of hatred against them for their difference.' In this essay, I will examine how throughout their history the Jains have defined themselves as distinct from competing religious groups, hence avoiding the pitfall of being absorbed into the mainstream, which happened
'One instance of suppression would come during the eleventh century in Tamil Nadu where Tirujnanasambandhar, a Hindu king, reportedly slaughtered many Jains, as depicted at the Minakshi Temple in Madurai. See Bhaskar Anand Salatore, Mediaeval Jainism: With Special Reference to the Vijayanagara Empire (Bombay: Karnatak Publishing House, 1938), pp. 278-279. Another instance is the death of Todar Mal (1719-1766), who, as noted by Paul Dundas, "seems to have been executed as a sectarian leader in the aftermath of what would today be described as a 'communal disturbance"" [for being a] "denouncer of both Hinduism and Islam as false religions." See Paul Dundas, "Jain Perceptions of Islam in the Early Modern Period," Indo-Iranian Journal, Vol. 42, 1999, pp. 35-46, p. 42.
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