Ahimsa, Anekanta and Jainism.

• Author: Cort, John E.
• Position: Book review

Ahimsa, Anekanta and Jainism. Edited by TARA SETHIA. Lala S. L. Jain Research Series, vol. 21. Delhi: MOTILAL BANARSIDASS, 2004. Pp. xvi + 247. Rs. 295 (cloth); 195 (paper).

Among the challenges religious communities face in the modern world is the task of redefining their traditions and world-views as intellectually articulated philosophies and beliefs, whereas in the past they have been as much if not more what Pierre Bourdieu has called a habitus. In part this is a feature of the gradual privatization of religion, as it is relegated worldwide to restricted arenas of human experience, as personal belief rather than social practice. In part it is due to the inevitable demographic pressures of religious, theological, and philosophical diversity, which force religious thinkers to articulate their traditions in terms that are comprehensible to believers and non-believers alike, and in terms that take cognizance of the existence of alternative, contradictory religions and world-views. It is also in part due to the need to articulate one's tradition in new contexts as a full-fledged participant in global discourses on topics such as religious pluralism, environmentalism, and social justice.

As Jains in the nineteenth, twentieth, and now twenty-first centuries have undertaken the task of reframing their ancient traditions, they have turned to a handful of concepts that have been recast as Jainism's contribution to the world's religiosity. One of these is Jainism as an inherently environmental religion, as best exemplified in the 2002 Jainism and Ecology: Nonviolence in the Web of Life, edited by Christopher Key Chapple (Cambridge, Mass.: Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University). Two concepts that are often tied to environmentalism as a package are ahimsa and anekanta or anekantavada. In the glossary of the volume under review these are translated as "nonviolence" and "non-absolutism." The twelve essays in Ahimsa, Anekanta and Jainism explore a wide range of facets and expressions of these two terms. A third concept is aparigraha, "non-possession" or "non-attachment." While this last concept is perhaps the most difficult to integrate into the lives of Jains who are thoroughly enmeshed in global capitalism, it was the subject of a July 2005 conference organized by Tara Sethia, the editor of this volume.

The essays in Ahimsa, Anekanta and Jainism emerged from a 2002 conference at California State Polytechnic University at...