Jainology Prefigured Postmodern Thought
By Mr. N Krishnaswamy
All of us know the story of the six blind persons, who tried to describe an elephant after each one touching and feeling a part of it. They came out with six different versions of what an elephant was like, each version being partially correct. This simple story, the authorship of which is attributed to Lord Mahavira, who propounded Jainism about 2500 years ago, tells us a profound truth - a thing has manifold character and it cannot be comprehended in its totality (if there be one) unless one is omniscient.
The manifoldness of 'reality' has always fascinated philosophers, scientists and poets. The search for the understanding of 'reality' (whatever it means) and meaning (of the world and the word) has been humanity's deepest desire. The Japanese film director, Akira Kurosawa's great movie, 'Rashomon' was about witnesses to a murder who give totally different versions of what happened (mind you, they are not even blind)! Thus the 'Rashomon effect' - an expression that conveys the idea that all facts and events are subject to multiple interpretations.
Post-modernism, and the related theory of post-structuralism widely used in literary criticism, are of recent origin. Post-modernism and post-structuralism contend that every field of ideas is a site of contending forces. According to the French philosophers Lyotard, the postmodern condition "refines our sensibility to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable". In post-modernist thinking there is no 'subject' except in representation, but no representation can capture the 'subject' completely because the 'subject' is subject to the dialectic of recognition, the logic of transience and tentativeness. There are only traces and formations and nothing is definite or fully formed. One can say that it is the 'Rashomon effect' operating.
In the Indian subcontinent, the quest for the nature of 'reality' has oscillated between absolutism or fixism, as in Vedantic philosophy, on the one hand and non-absolutism or fluxism, as in some shades of Buddhist formulations, on the other. In between, there have been several shades of thinking, subordinating difference to identity or identity to difference.
Jainology - a comprehensive term that includes the religion, philosophy and culture - is perhaps the richest and the most realistic of all the doctrines propounded in the subcontinent. It captures pluralism, the very essence of Indianness and postulates the principle of tolerance that necessarily goes with pluralism. The basic philosophy of Jainism is 'anekantavada', the theory of many-sidedness. It argues that al object of the world are multiform and that they are endowed with infinite qualities and relations. This relative pluralism can be considers from different points of view or nayas that show all understanding and judgments as relative and probable.
This is further exemplifies in syadvada ('syad', meaning may be), the theory of conditional prediction which may be called 'maybeism' or 'perhapsism'. The Jaina dialectic neither nihilistic nor metaphysical; it is realistic in the sense it accepts the manifoldness or reality and postulates a 'multiverse' as opposed to the concept of universe.
Take, for example, the case of what is called 'a pot'. In a sense and from a certain point of view the pot exists; from another point of view the pot exists; from another point of view and in another sense the pot does not exist; from a third point of view what is called a pot is inexpressible. The affirmation, denial and inexpressibility of a pot can be combined in several ways that can give various standpoints to show that a 'real' is sui generis, in that it cannot be placed under a head of identity or of difference, both of which are contained as traits in the Others. There can be identity only in difference.
The richness of Jainology has not been properly projected in the present-day context. The religious point of view has been given more importance than its philosophy and as a result the intellectual aspect of Jainology has not been internationally recognised. What we have in Jainology is actually 'postmodernist' thinking handed down from ancient India. At least this year, when we are planning the Mahavir Jayanti in a big way, let us hope that intellectuals and researchers take up a serious study of Jainology and compare it with post-modernism.
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Source : The Times of India, New Delhi
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Mail to : Ahimsa Foundation
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