Jain Identity and the Public Sphere in Nineteenth-Century India

Abstract

The author focuses on the creation of a new sense of religious identity across Indian religions over the nineteenth century, analysing in particular the process in which a pan-Indian concept of being ‘Jain’ developed. The chapter discusses two conflictual cases that turned around whether or not it is proper for Jains to worship icons of the Jinas. The cases involved Ḍhuṇḍhiyā or Sthānakvāsī and Mūrtipūjak Jains, critiques and proponents of icon worship, and, in the case of the second dispute, also the founder of the Arya Samaj, Dayanand Saraswati. Whereas in the 1820s, identity was primarily defined by caste, sixty years later the common identity was that of shared religious belonging. Demonstrating the role of the new public sphere, the author argues that two colonialism-driven projects came together here, the introduction of the British legal system, and the introduction of new technologies of travel, communication, and dissemination of information.