What Jains Do Not Tell You About Jainism?

Most of the Jains like to hide the key features of Jainism and talk only about Non-violence, Vegetarian diet and other food habits. They do it because most of the lay Jains do not know about basic philosophy of Jainism.

Here are some unique features of Jainism:

No Creator God: Jainism do not believe in creator God. According to Jainism the universe is eternal and endless, it was not created. Jain scholar monks have written lot about this, today's Jain monks know about it. But they do not like to speak on this issue. As most of the Jain laymen know Jainism through monks, there is no question of their being aware of Jainism's non-creation theory.

Equality: Jainism is staunch promoter of equality amongst human beings. Jain philosophy does not discriminate anybody in the name of Gender, Color, Creed, Caste, Language, Region, country etc. Jainism believes in equal rights in opportunities. Most of Jains are unaware of this fact.

Pluralism: Pluralism is basic and one of the most important features of Jainism. According to it truth can be judged only after knowing different points of views. Single point view never can claim for complete truth. Finding absolute truth is not possible for human beings as any object has infinitive qualities in it and we can not get all of them due to limitations of our knowledge.

Non Possession: Among the list of 5 vows of monks and Laymen, one is non-possession. In Jainism, possession is considered as the father of all sins. As most of the Jains are money oriented, they do not speak about this vow.

Violence in Defense: A very important thing Jains like to hide is that Jainism permits it's followers to fight against the enemy if the enemy attacks. This is applicable to the attacks on self, nation, society, family etc. Jainism is not for cowards. All the ford makers of this religion were warriors. Until later medieval period, Jainism was dominated by warrior communities, but later it became dominated by merchant communities. As merchants do not like to fight even if someone attacks, they never speak about this key feature of Jainism.

History: Jainism has a rich ancient and medieval history. Jainism and Jains have contributed a lot in development of Indian culture, languages, literature, architecture, mathematics, Ayurveda (ancient medical science), business etc. But most of the Jains do not know their own history.

This all is happening because today's Jainism is a religion of money oriented people. They are not interested in anything but earning money. So they can not tell the core factors of Jainism. For them, Jainism is just vegetarianism and rituals.

That is why most of the great scholars of Jainism are from non-Jain communities.

-Mahavir Sanglikar