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belief that a soul in its wandering may inhabit both kinds of forms. Ancient Brahmanical literature is conspicuously silent about ahimsa. The early Vedic texts do not even record the noun ahimsa nor know the ethical meaning which the noun later designated… Nor is an explanation of ahimsa deducible from other parts of Vedic literature. The ethical concept which it emdodies was entirely foreign to the thinking of the early Vedic Aryans, who recognised no kinship between human and animal creation, but rather ate meat and offered animals the sacrifice to the gods." (pp.53-54)

Therefore Prof. Brown concludes: "The double doctrine of ahimsa and vegetarianism has never had full and unchallenged acceptance and practice among Hindus, and should not be considered to have arisen in Brahmanical circles. It seems more probable that it originated in non-Brahmanical environment, and was promoted in historic India by the Jains and adopted by Brahmanic Hinduism."

I propose to discuss Jain minority issue as it has evolved in the last hundred years. The remarkable thing about the Jain minority issue is that it was duly noted by the contemporary British rulers as far back as in 1909. Even more significantly the Census of India has been counting the Jains as a separate religious community right from the first census in 1873. With the dawn of the Indian freedom the Jain community did present its claim for minority status to the Constituent Assembly during the formation of the Indian Constitution. It would be also most relevant to refer here to the two one anna coins minted during the East India Company regime in 1818 depicting Bhagwan Mahavira and Bhagvan Parsvanatha.

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Then I would like to refer to the Imperial Gazeteer showing the British Indian Empire map in 1909 in which prevailing religions are shown as Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains. This I think as a most remarkable acknowledgment by the British India of Jainism as a distinct religious entity in India.

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Yet the Jain leaders continued their efforts and made several representations to the non-statutory National Commission for Minorities for their designation as a national minority. Later with the enactment of National Commission for Minorities Act in 1992 Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Zoroastrians (Parsis) were notified as minorities omitting inexplicably the Jains. But due to their persistent representations finally the NCM recommended for the inclusion of the Jain community but it was not notified thus by the Government. The entire constitutional, legal and political process of the recognition of the Jain minority status is rendered confusion worse confounded by the interpretative ‘Hindutva’ parameters whether, political, religious and judicial-particularly as evidenced in the latest Supreme Court judgement in my Petition (Bal Patil & anr Vs. Union of India) which has in its obiter dicta stated that the “Hinduism is the common faith of India” and “Jainism is a special religion”. As an extreme example I can cite the case of my complaint against the Editor, The Hindu-a prominent Indian daily- re: a report as follows: "The Central Government's reported move to give Scheduled Caste status to Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims will deprive current SCs (among the Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists) of their job and education quotas, according to Vijay Sonkar, President of All India Scheduled Caste Reservation Protection Forum." Despite my complaint to the Press Council of India and the Press Council’s direction to The Hindu Editor The Hindu has not yet published my rejoinder. Another example relates to misrepresentation of Jain Digambar community by Mr Soli Sorabjee, the former Attorney General of India, and an eminent jurist. He has tendered apology in a civil suit of defamation filed by me for having defamed the Jain Digambar religious community through comments in a column in an English daily in Mumbai in 2003. Mr.Soli Sorabjee had written in his “Out of Court” column in Times of India that “The urge to bare one’s body springs from different compulsions. a certain sect of Jains- Digambars- who move about uncovered in public invoke their right of religious freedom.” As the concerned English daily failed to publish a rejoinder objecting to its defamatory implications and as there was no response even after a complaint was lodged with the Press Council of India I filed a defamation suit in the City Civil Court. In the recent hearing on the matter it was pleaded on behalf of Mr.Sorabjee that when writing the impugned observations he had no intention to hurt or insult the religious susceptibilities of the Digambar Jain religious community, and if inadvertantly it has caused any hurt he regrets the same. Satisfied with this expression of regret I withdrew the defamation proceedings against Mr.Sorabjee, but defamations proceedings against the concerned English paper, its publishers, and the editor continue. I am always puzzled why most historians, commentators, when they begin their search start with the phrase: ‘Jainism like Buddhism…, I cannot make out why nobody ever begins with the phrase :’Buddhism like Jainism…, Sometimes I wonder, forgive my impertinence, if there is an unwritten conspiracy to somehow bury Jainism in the historical fossils as if it is a relic of some forgotten credo of no consequence in the history of religions.

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Apart from a few exceptions, most histories and encyclopaedias of world religions fail to mention Jainism as an independent religion. There are pervasive misconceptions about the origin of Jainism, about its relation to Vedic-Brahmanic Hinduism, about Mahavira being the founder of Jainism, about Jainism being an offshoot of Buddhism or Hinduism, or a reformist sect of Hinduism. There are misrepresentations galore. Jainism is overshadowed by Hinduism and Buddhism and, if noticed at all, is mentioned in passing as one of the ancient Indian religious movements subsidiary to Buddhism. Almost all the scholars agree that Jainism has pre-Aryan roots in the religious and cultural history of India. As Dr. A. N. Upadhye remarked - “The origins of Jainism go back to the pre-historic times. They are to be sought in the fertile valley of Ganga, where they flourished in the past, even before the advent of Aryans with their priestly religion, a society of recluses who laid much stress on individual exertion, on practice of a code of morality and devotion to austerities, as means of attaining religious Summum Bonum.” (Jainism by Colette Caillat, A.N. Upadhye & Bal Patil, Macmillan, 1974) In fact, the Jain system of thought is so wonderfully consistent with modern realism and science that one may easily be tempted to question its antiquity, about which, however, there is now no doubt. as Dr. Walthur Schubring observes, "He who has a thorough knowledge of the structure of the world cannot but admire the inward logic and harmony of Jain ideas. Hand in hand with the refined cosmographical ideas goes a high standard of astronomy and mathematics." Dr. Hermann Jacobi also believes that "Jainism goes back to a very early period, and to primitive currents of religious and metaphysical speculation, which gave rise to the oldest Indian philosophies. They (the Jains) seem to have worked out their system from the most primitive notions about matter."

In the Buddhist scripture Majjima Nikaya, Buddha himself tells us about his ascetic life and its ordinances which are in conformity with the Jain monk’s code of conduct. He says, "Thus far, SariPutta, did I go in my penance. I went without clothes. I licked my food from my hands. I took no food that was brought or meant especially for me. I accepted no invitation to a meal." Mrs. Rhys Davis has observed that Buddha found his two teachers Alara and Uddaka at Vaisali and started his religious life as a Jain.

Such is the context of the pervasive impact of the misleading Indian historiography from the deleterious effects of which even the most eminent historians, both right and left are not immune. One of the consequences of this failure is the continuing hold of misleading stereotypes of the nature of Indic religious thought and practice. I think this has a vital bearing on the devastatingly damaging impact of the misconceived Indological and ‘Oriental’ stereotypes on the Indian ethno-religious historiography so as to necessitate a paradigmatic revaluation.

This misinterpretation of history is compounded by what the doyen of Indian Indologists, Dr.R.G. Bhandarkar noted as to how “India has no written history. Nothing was known till within recent times of the political condition of the