Download Download

Nidān, Volume 5, No. 1, July 2020, pp. 82-84 ISSN 2414-8636 Doi.org/10.3886/nidan.2020.5.1.6 Book Review Pankaj Jain. Dharma in America: A Short History of Hindu-Jain Diaspora. London and New York: Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group), 2020. Pp. viii +149. ISBN 978-1-138-56545-6. Price: $ 38.98. The real objective of Professor Jain’s short and highly readable text is not very clear. The main title reads Dharma in America, that is, Religion, and the explanatory subtitle is “A Short History of Hindu-Jain Diaspora. But the Contents page lists topics about the socio-economic and-cultural achievements and contributions of the diasporic Indians—Hindu and Jain. His targeted readers are presumed to be aware of who the Hindus and Jains are. He never discusses the religious texts and tenets of these people he writes about, despite his brief and interesting personal autobiographical notes. Consequently, he does not tackle the vexed issue of the distinct or derivative identity of the Hindus and the Jains. The erstwhile editor of the Times of India Girilal Jain opposed Jain separatedness. The Bharatiya Janata Party president Murli Manohar Joshi boldly declared in Antwerp in August 1992 that “Jains are the best Hindus of all.” Sādvī Dr. Sadhana of Ācārya Sushil Kumar Ashram, Delhi declared that “Jains and the other Hindus are the inheritors of a common heritage (Koenrad Elst, “Who is a Hindu?: Hindu Revivalist Views of Animism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Other Offshoots of Hinduism” [2001], ch. 7. koenradelst.bharatvani.org/books/wiah/ch7.htm. accesssed 2/22/2020). However, some modern-day young educated Jains are keen on forging a distinct Jain identity away from the hegemonic Hindu religion and culture. One such Jain enthusiast is a brilliant young American Jain named Nikhil Bumb. According to him, Jains and Hindus differ in their interpretations of karma, punarjanma, and mokṣa much as they do in respect of rituals, rites, and holy days. Although Bumb does not get into the Jain ethic or theology, some American experts provide shrewd scholarly discussions on the most important Jain epistemology anekāntavāda [theory of many-sidedness]. According to Nicholas Gier, “this famous doctrine of many-sidedness…contrasted with the one-sided (ekānta) views of [Hindu] Vedānta and Sāṃkhya” (Spiritual Titanism: Indian, Chinese, and Western Perspectives. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000, 90). Yet Bumb avers unhesitatingly: “I know that the belief in one does not exclude 82 Sil / Book Review the practice of the other. And know that, ultimately, wherever I fell in the Jain- Hindu spectrum, somehow it checks out” (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jain- or-hindu-finding-a-d_b_784001. Accessed 3/2/20). Our author appears to share partly Bumb’s take on what it means to be a Jain in India as well as in the diaspora. Admittedly, Dr. Jain often tries to blur or transcend the Hindu-Jain dichotomy by equating and “homogenizing” both under the umbrella term “Indian” or “Indian American.” Thus, he talks about them in the Hindu or Indian diaspora and provides an excellent succinct account of the Jains in America (Chapter 5) but also adding two chapters (3 & 4), sensibly, on the “Indian” (basically non-Jain) contributions to medical and musical fields in the United States. It appears from the Contents page that he has deliberately refrained from discussing the two major Jaina sects—Śvetāmbara, the White-Robed and Digambara, the Disrobed— or any controversial issues surrounding the Hindu-Jain identity. The general scholarly consensus has it that Jainism—its putative founder being the first tīirthaṅkara [literally, “ford-maker,” that is, builder of passage to mokṣa or liberation], a legendary figure named Ṛṣabhanātha or Vṛṣabhanātha [literally, lord of the bull], symbolized as bull that mirrors the GrecoRoman-Persian god Mithra the bull, believed to have been born in Ayodhya and the bullborne Hindu Shiva, Mahadeva or the Great God—is an offshoot, much like Buddhism, of the religion of the Hindus (for a concise but careful account of the history, ethics, and theology of Jainism see Gier, Spiritual Titanism, 79-97). The well-written chapter 2 that puzzlingly leaves out the Jains but deals with Indians in the US as “silent minority” appears somewhat odd as it is based almost entirely on internet sources (of the eleven endnotes eight appear to have been accessed on a single date, May 13, one on May 4, another on July 10, 2017 and one printed source with no pagination), despite his shrewd observation on the evolution of the Indians from an obscure existence in America as part of a “silent minority” to the status of a model immigrant community of most vocal, vibrant, and successful professionals (3-4). Indeed, a casual perusal of the New York based Indo-American newspaper India Abroad shows how they are reported in every issue for their triumphant achievements in economic, social, cultural, and slowly but steadily even in political spheres for which they are increasingly regarded as model immigrants. Puzzlingly, however, the author’s dependence on an undergraduate “thesis,” leaves out many other sources that agree on the actual sources of the Hindu influence (17-18). Initially, Hindu contact with the New World emanated from the indentured sugar plant laborers imported from eastern and northern colonial 83 Nidān, Volume 5, No. 1, July 2020, pp. 82-84 ISSN 2414-863 India who were mostly illiterate but practiced their native rituals and were mostly vegans. Presumably their eating habit may have to do with their poverty back home and they continued to follow their eating habit even when they were relocated as coolies in the Caribbean. The founder of Rastafarianism Leonard Howell (1898-1981) had little familiarity with Hindu scriptures or any written texts and was thus innocent of the philosophical, theological, and soteriological concerns but adopted the externals such as ritual worship of doll-like idols of Gaṇeśa or Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa and, above all, Śiva sporting dreadlock or matted hair (jaṭā) and a drug (gāṅjā or bhāṅg) addict . Yet, Rastafarianism, actually a cult based on Christian Weltanschauung, is named after Ras [duke] Tafari, pre-regnal name of the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie (literally “Power of the Trinity,” r. 1930-74), the iconic Black Christian royalty who is , ironicallly, reported to have claimed that he was African but no Negro. In the final analysis, readers, lay as well as academic, will remain grateful to Professor Jain for his impartial, inclusive, and important study of the Indians— Hindu and Jain—in the US, the most helpful parts being chapters 3 on the Jains and 4 on the Hindus. And, despite his conscious effort to distance himself from the camp of Hindu-Jain distinction, he appears to be a follower of Hindu religion and culture when he admits his immersion (“all for the first time, in my last year of being in India”) in Indian culture through a study of the Bhāgavadgītā and several books on Indian philosophy, spirituality, and history, listening to Indian classical music, practicing yoga, and visits to Ramakrishna Vedanta Center in Hyderabad (vii), but his concluding thoughts give him away as a true Jain anekāntavādin who finds solace in the Hindu Ṛgvedic wisdom “Ekaṃ sadvipra bahudhā vadanti” [“The truth is one, sages call it by various names”] (105). Reviewed by Narasingha P. Sil, Professor Emeritus of History, Western Oregon University. [email protected] 84 .

Load more