The Citizen Amendment Act of 2019 and its lack of impact on Shvetambara Jains in Mumbai: cautious debates on religious freedom and minority rights in a gated community
Often described as the world's largest democracy, India has a secular constitution designed for a multi-religious people, which provides a framework for a wide range of political debates, as well as sociological and anthropological discourses. These are, however, mainly focused on relations bet...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Univ.
2020
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| In: |
Nidān
Year: 2020, Volume: 5, Issue: 2, Pages: 51-82 |
| Further subjects: | B
Minority politics
B western India B heterogenous categories B Jains B Religious Identity |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | Often described as the world's largest democracy, India has a secular constitution designed for a multi-religious people, which provides a framework for a wide range of political debates, as well as sociological and anthropological discourses. These are, however, mainly focused on relations between the largest religious minority of India, the Muslims, and the Hindu majority. My paper takes a different direction as it focuses on a very small section of the Indian population, seeking to explore what religious freedom and minority rights mean for contemporary Jains in India, a community which highly appreciates the supreme value of non-violence. Jains have not claimed their minority rights with the support of armed violence, much in contrast to Hindutva activists, Muslims motivated by Islamism, and militant pro-Khalistan Sikhs. Instead, Jains rest their claim for religious freedom and religious minority status on authoritative, scriptural knowledge which is equated with legislative texts (of various colonial/post-independence inner Indian state and/or supranational/ international authorities, such as UN charters). Describing the main features of Jainism and Jain community in post-independent India, this paper draws on the controversial practice of initiating children into the strict ascetic lifestyle of Jain sadhus and Jain sadhvis to analyse how orthodox Jains were able to successfully defend their idea of religious freedom from a historical, and contemporary perspective. This strategy to maintain religious freedom is deeply connected with longstanding Jain endeavours for gaining national religious minority status, granted in 2014. Against this background, crucial questions emerge about the fundamental interrogation of secular ideas underlying the CAA debate and how this affects the local Shvetambara communities of western India. This paper highlights the unique position of the Jain community in urban western India, in relation to both, the rigid BJP policy towards minorities in general, but also towards the larger Muslim minority. |
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| ISSN: | 2414-8636 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Nidān
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.58125/nidan.2020.2 |