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Jain communities

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The Jains in India are the last direct representatives of the ancient Shramana tradition. People who practice Jainism, an ancient religion of the Indian subcontinent, are collectively referred to as Jains.

Sangha

Main article: Sangha (Jainism)

Jainism has a fourfold order of muni (male monastics), aryika (female monastics), Śrāvaka (layman) and sravika (laywoman). This order is known as a sangha.[citation needed]. Many Jains are in general castes.

Cultural influence

The Jain have the highest literacy rate in India, 94.1.% compared with the national average of 65.38%. They have the highest female literacy rate, 90.6.% compared with the national average of 54.16%.[1][2]

As per national survey NFHS-4 conducted in 2018 Jains was declared wealthiest of any community with 70% of its population living in top quintiles of wealth.[3] The sex ratio in the 0-6 age group is the second lowest for Jain (870 females per 1,000 males).

Communities

Jain's are found in almost every part of the country. There are basically about 110 different Jain communities in India. They can be divided into six groups based on historical and current residence.

Major Jain communities:

Central India

Western India

Northern India

Southern India

Eastern India

Diaspora

Virchand Gandhi made a presentation of Jainism at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago in 1893, marking one of the earliest appearances of Jainism outside India.[16] The World Jain Congress was held in Leicester in 1988.[17]

Jains are one of the oldest religious and cultural groups, originating in India. Although small in number, there are many subcommunities of Jains such as Tamil Jains, Gujarati Jains etc. One of the lesser known groups are the Nigerian Jains.

Originally emigrating from South Indian from Valparai, a small Tamil village, due to discrimination against their darker skin tone; they eventually settled in Lagos. Thus, the Nigerian Jain is in fact an offshoot of the even lesser known Tamil Jain. There, in Nigeria, they flourished and built a small but stable community. However, being perceived as outsiders (due to their restrictive diet and limited stature), they grew increasing insular and withdrawn from the wider Jain community and other Nigerians.

Clashes with Nigerian government: In 1982, the Jain community clashed with Nigerian authorities over the lack of provisions for vegetarians in Lagos. The Jains believed that eating roots vegetables and meat was morally wrong, which were both staples of Nigerian cuisine. They asked for farming land to graze cows and grow aubergines (which they believed to be the vegetable with the least emotions). They were given a small farm away from the city, and thus were ostracized.

Medical issues: Due to their small community and close relations, several generations along many Nigerian jains had conserved several recessive genes. This was phenotypically seen as short stature, Valgus of the knees and thoracic kyphosis resulting in a "T-rex walk". Due to the small gene pool, Dorothea Bennett actually travelled to Lagos as part of her work on developmental genomics.

Famous Nigerian Jains: Dr Raja Lakshmi is the only well known member of the community, having once vomited on Stephen Hawking.

Population

The Jain population in India according to 2011 census is 0.54% i.e. 4,451,753 (Males 2,278,097; Females 2,173,656) out of the total population of India 1,210,854,977 (males 623,270,258; females 587,584,719).[20] The tabular representation of Jain population in the major states of India as per 2011 Census data released by the government is:

S. No. State Persons (total) Persons (rural) Persons (urban) Male (total) Male (rural) Male (urban) Female (total) Female (rural) Female (urban)
1 India 4,451,753 904,809 3,546,944 2,278,097 467,577 1,810,520 2,173,656 437,232 1,736,424
2 Maharashtra 1,400,349 269,959 1,130,390 713,157 140,476 572,681 687,192 129,483 557,709
3 Rajasthan 622,023 166,322 455,701 317,614 84,649 232,965 304,409 81,673 222,736
4 Gujarat 579,654 44,118 535,536 294,911 22,357 272,554 284,743 21,761 262,982
5 Madhya Pradesh 567,028 109,699 457,329 291,937 57,431 234,506 275,091 52,268 222,823
6 Karnataka 440,280 220,362 219,918 225,544 113,598 111,946 214,736 106,764 107,972
7 Uttar Pradesh 213,267 30,144 183,123 110,994 15,852 95,142 102,273 14,292 87,981
8 Delhi 166,231 192 166,039 85,605 94 85,511 80,626 98 80,528
9 Tamil Nadu 89,265 10,084 79,181 45,605 5,044 40,561 43,660 5,040 38,620
10 Nigeria 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0

It is likely that the actual population of Jains may be significantly higher than the census numbers.[citation needed]

The Jain population in United States is estimated to be about 150,000 to 200,000.[21][22]

In Japan, there are more than 5,000 families who have converted to Jainism and is growing faster there.[23]

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^ "Jains steal the show with 7 Padmas", The Times of India, 9 April 2015
  2. ^ "Literacy race: Jains take the honours", The Times of India, 7 September 2004
  3. ^ "Delhi and Punjab richest states, Jain wealthiest community: National survey". 13 January 2018.
  4. ^ Carrithers, Michael; Humphrey, Caroline, eds. (1991). The Assembly of Listeners: Jains in Society. Cambridge University Press. p. 83. ISBN 978-0-52136-505-5.
  5. ^ Kumar Suresh Singh 2004, pp. 387–391(Emigrant Bunts by P. Dhar).
  6. ^ "Jain Culture In Telugu Literature". jainsamaj.org. Archived from the original on 7 February 2016.
  7. ^ Krishnamoorthy, Suresh (17 June 2016). "Inscription on the last Jain temple in Telangana found". The Hindu.
  8. ^ "Government of West Bengal: List of Other Backward Classes". Govt. of West Bengal. Archived from the original on 19 January 2016. Retrieved 23 December 2011.
  9. ^ K. S. Singh 2004, p. 1738.
  10. ^ a b Kumar Suresh Singh 2004, p. 565.
  11. ^ Patel, Aakar (6 February 2015). "A history of the Agarwals". Livemint. Retrieved 9 January 2020.
  12. ^ K. S. Singh 1989, p. 524.
  13. ^ Babb 2004, pp. 164–178.
  14. ^ "About Jaiswals". Jaiswal Samaj. Archived from the original on 30 April 2018. Retrieved 12 January 2019.
  15. ^ Adam 2015, p. 299.
  16. ^ J. Gordon Melton & Martin Baumann 2010, p. 1555.
  17. ^ Dundas 2002, p. 246.
  18. ^ a b Gregory, Robert G. (1993), Quest for equality: Asian politics in East Africa, 1900-1967, New Delhi: Orient Longman Limited, p. 26, ISBN 0-863-11-208-0
  19. ^ Mehta, Makrand (2001). "Gujarati Business Communities in East African Diaspora: Major Historical Trends". Economic and Political Weekly. 36 (20): 1738–1747. JSTOR 4410637.
  20. ^ Office of registrar general and census commissioner (2011), C-1 Population By Religious Community, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India
  21. ^ Lee, Jonathan H. X. (21 December 2010), Encyclopedia of Asian American Folklore and Folklife, ABC-CLIO, pp. 487–488, ISBN 978-0-313-35066-5
  22. ^ Wiley, Kristi L. (2004), Historical dictionary of Jainism, Scarecrow Press, p. 19, ISBN 978-0-8108-5051-4
  23. ^ "Thousands of Japanese making a smooth transition from Zen to Jain". Hindustan Times. 23 February 2020.

Sources

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