Modi & Jainism (1)

Good news on the home front. The application for a diplomatic visa was denied for Gujarat CM Narendra "the butcher" Modi since his imminent visit was not of a diplomatic nature. And his business/tourist visa has been revoked on the grounds that he has denied religious freedoms at home. Thanks to Saurav for fast and furious writing on this news. I thought about it for a short while, amazed that this government would take such a strong position on this issue, but I felt very quickly that this was about the Christian Right flexing its muscle, as Modi and the BJP had been in power during the most egregious attacks against Christians in India in recent memory. From some initial research, it doesn't seem that that is too far from the truth. The Christian Right has made it an institutional priority to pressure the Administration on religious persecution of Christians around the world. We've seen it in East Timor, in Sudan, and elsewhere. I'll have to post links when I get a chance.

However, I am not fully satisfied with this news. I was half-hoping that I would have the chance to send an email out to my family members in NJ, many of whom harbor their own biases in favor of Modi and against the diversity of Gujarat. We have a family event on Sunday morning, and I wanted to send an email to announce that shortly thereafter, we would be leaving for the protest at Madison Square Garden that had been planned to deny Modi the benefit of a quiet acquiescence from those in the U.S. who don't agree with his policies of hatred and genocide. I wanted to open up the remaining seats in our car to anyone who would like to join us in this fight to reclaim Gujarat as something other than the place where intolerance reigns, or "the Hindutva laboratory".

This was my hope, because on the whole, I worry that my family is filled with Modi-sympathizers, and I wanted to out some of them in this fairly jarring way (although even as I type this I am composing a victory email with the title "Gandhi prevails over Hitler as Butcher Modi denied entry into U.S."). While I don't condone their compliance and complacency to accept the RSS-driven status-quo feeling of NRGs who think that "Gujarat Shining" should be the motto of the land, I can occasionally move past the older generation's defense of the progress with the BJP in power. I still try to confront this line of thinking, but I operate within some parameters of respect and balance, in deference to my parents, upon whom my uncouth behavior would unnecessarily be blamed.

However, to my cousins, I show little patience for their angry responses, unaware that I am onto their game: "passing" as part of the Hindu-majority when in Gujarati circles, yet strangely adamant in their preservation and observance of Jain traditions, and accumulated rituals within the home. And this is the true irony - even as they become more removed from the Gujarat that they knew, they continue to develop a zealous community here to mirror the imagined community at home that they have come to believe once existed. A "pure" community, of sorts, in which groups only interact with their own, and the lines of difference become even more hardened than they once were.

My mother was a high school teacher in Ahmedabad in the sixties. Her family was educated, but quite poor. She taught a class that was ~60% Muslim. Daily interactions in formal settings were taken for granted, and as in the United States or any other society, it seems, there were invisible and visible lines that people didn't cross often, and I'm sure that there were biases and harbored feelings of mistrust. But it was not state-endorsed, nor mob-driven, and the ideological hatemongers did not dominate the bandwidth of public discourse. The Jain identity of my mother's community was quite strong, but I don't feel that they were as willing as they are now to just fall in line with the Hindu majority with whom they broke rank more than 2,500 years ago.

But now, it is harder to draw that line between the Jain and Hindu communities, this realm of thinking and questioning is now almost entirely limited to the academician and the monk. The layperson merges the two easily, shifting between customs that have been adopted in Jainism to the familiar rites of Hinduism. We pray to "God" now, though Jains do not technically believe in omniscient, omnipotent deities. What happened to the introspection and meditation that is supposed to be the root of Jain philosophy? Have we become co-opted into a culture of ritualism that believes that rote religious tasks and habitual praying will cleanse and save the soul, divorced from our karma?

How can Jains stand idly by as hundreds are killed, and tens of thousands are put deliberately in harm's way, be it in the Northern border conflicts, the streets of Gujarat, or wherever else? Worse, how can they allow Hindutva-driven neo-nationalism to blind them of their responsibility and quest to "live and let live"? Am I being too idealistic? Instead of a strong center for social justice, does Jainism only offer solace for an individual to find her own path, as she moves towards personal enlightenment, and detachment from the material world, as I was informed at the JAINA Convention of 2000? This is the first of more posts on this topic.

I know that I have not gone into detail about Jainism, and just broke into this stream of consciousness, but I'll post some links and background for anyone interested soon. I did find out that the SAJA Stylebook doesn't have a listing for Jains, which I'll have to inform them about.

Next post on this topic.