Observations & Views:

A recent newsletter of the Jain Religion Center of Wisconsin contains the following guidelines regarding their temple:

1) Only TEERTHANKARs' images and pictures are allowed in the temple.

2) Only TEERTHANKARs' names may be written on the walls of the temple.

3) Worships and celebrations are open to all and must allow no distractions by gheeboli (competitive bidding or financial matters).

(During large gatherings, names will be randomly selected for performing various prayers and worships.)

4) All worships and devotional celebrations will be given equal importance regardless of tradition.

The letter does not list the names of president, secretary, treasurer, trustees or donors.

The Jain Religion Center of Wisconsin has taken highly commendable concrete steps to safeguard the unique features of the Jain religion. We, including all the Jain institutions, should learn from this illustrious example.

All religions denounce greed as evil and extol the virtue of non-possessiveness. Nevertheless, materialism has been projecting dark shadows on humanity. Indians are no exception, here as well as in India. Our religion and culture are being tarnished in this process. In a feature entitled 'Land of Milk and Money', Bhaskar Ghose brings out this fact. The article begins with a conversation with a West Indian taxi driver in New York City.

- D. C. J.

I (Mr. Ghose) changed the subject and told him (the taxi driver) that this was still the land of milk and honey, where people came with little more than hope and became millionaires. Whoever's President, I suggested, that surely won't change. "Milk and honey, eh?"

The man was amused. Then he conceded that people could make money in that country (USA). "But you know what? What they don't have here is love. Now you have a lot of it where you come from. Me, I'm from British Guyana, and we've got a lot of it there. We may not be rich, but we have love. Here, there's no love."

When I expressed some skepticism, he explained what he meant. Everything was for individual gain, for an individual pursuit of happiness, money, or whatever. So if people got in the way, you just went over them to get what you wanted. That's how one got rich, that's how one lived. "Here you don't take no prisoners, man."

Later, in the plane, I kept thinking of what he'd said. And did we take no prisoners here in India? What was the love he was talking about, except love for oneself and one's own advancement? Did we really differ from the Americans in the way he said? Back in Delhi it didn't seem so at all. The papers reported killings, rape and kidnappings; the sordid dirty deals involving a game, cricket, went on &emdash; business as usual. Some things never change, they only seem different from a distance. But it is easy to dismiss it all in these rather simplistic terms, because they are, in a grim way, comforting by being familiar. And it also is an automatic, unthinking surrender to the world created by the media &emdash; the press and television.

The soap operas on television today seem to generate a great deal of interest because of the unusual sexual relationships that they present. Someone has a girlfriend and children by her; someone else has a boyfriend with whom she chooses to live. There appears to be no moral comment here, just interest in the events that unfold. Nor are the stories reported in the press terribly different from all this, apart, of course, from the murders and rapes.

One needs to step back a little from all this, and look around, at the people who throng the streets, the thousands going to work every day, and returning. The thousands crowding the trains to go 'home' for a holiday &emdash; wherever home is &emdash; to see their parents, or to a marriage. The people who cause traffic jams milling outside temples or gurdwaras. Out beyond the cities, one can see a small boy tending a large herd of buffaloes, or a tractor put-putting in a field, digging it up for the next crop.

There is a separate kind of life, or layers of lives, being lived. And it is here that bonds remain strong and endure, because of what the West Indian driver called love, and what the people here would call family tradition, duty and much else. (The word love does not come easily to them, but it is nonetheless what they are really talking about.)

They, too, want to make money, to earn more and do it the best way they can. Not all ways are honorable, but who is to sit in judgment on these matters? But certainly it isn't generally true that it comes above everything else, that no prisoners are taken. Not generally true, it may very well be, and is, in particular cases.

The interactions between these worlds of existence, these modes of living and public life, are, in addition, fairly close and complex, even though they may not appear to be.

So how different does all this make us from the cold, money-making Americans? Not very, if one were, again, to look beyond the media, admittedly a more difficult task in that country than here. Also, one has to look beyond the commercialization of aspects of family life like Thanksgiving and Christmas, to the packed planes and trains taking people 'home' &emdash; wherever home is and whatever home means. This is not a question of compulsion, or an unthinking duty; there is an equally strong and enduring element of love; except that the Americans talk about it far more than we do.

Moneymaking is certainly a very sacred mantra there; perhaps more sacred than here, not because we don't care for it as much, but because we don't know the mantra as well. But it would be foolish to see it as the only thing in their lives. The young West Indian was wrong. He was an immigrant and had gone to the US only to make money, as many Indians do, not to make a home, to settle within a community.

The original Pilgrim Fathers did not go to America to make a quick buck, but to lead the kind of lives which enabled them to cherish their own, and live as an honorable society. Later generations went there with more or less the same ideas. It's only now, when America is seen as a land of abundant wealth, where the good life &emdash; in material terms &emdash; can be led, that the new immigrants are streaming in.

Oh yes, the IT whiz kids, scientists, and doctors undoubtedly give to that country a great deal. But they're there for the cash, the BMW and the swank five-bedroom house; not for any ideals the US may have which they believe in, not for something they feel will draw their families closer and enrich them. It's they who take no prisoners, not even from among their own people. Everyone and everything is expendable for the goals they have set themselves.

Home / email us