The peace­ful, pi­ous, gen­er­ally in­ward Jain com­mu­nity has suc­cess­fully brought the state gov­ern­ment of Jhark­hand and the Union gov­ern­ment to its knees.  They were sud­denly up in arms. Lit­er­ally. Jain re­li­gious preach­ers and fol­low­ers of Jain­ism did not take lightly the move by the He­mant Soren’s Jhark­hand Peo­ple’s Party gov­ern­ment in Jhark­hand to des­ig­nate the his­toric Jain pil­grim­age cen­tre -Sammed Shikarji, lo­cated in the serene en­vi­ron­ment of the Paras­nath hills in Jhark­hand as a tourist cen­tre.

After protest­ing in large num­bers across the coun­try, the Jain peo­ple gath­ered in thou­sands in Mum­bai, vow­ing to ‘fight till their last breath’ and ’till the last drop of blood in their veins’. Men, women, the de­vout, and the re­li­gious chiefs de­scended onto the streets ru­ing the fact that dur­ing the Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tions, the youth de­scended on their pil­grim­age cen­tre and sul­lied the area in the name of “Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tions.”

Jains are one of the six com­mu­ni­ties of­fi­cially des­ig­nated as mi­nor­ity com­mu­ni­ties by the gov­ern­ment of In­dia, the oth­ers be­ing Mus­lims, Sikhs, Chris­tians, Bud­dhists and Parsees.

Af­ter knock­ing hard the knuck­les of the Mus­lims, Sikhs and Chris­tians in every con­ceiv­able way, there was no way that the ma­jori­tar­ian BJP Union gov­ern­ment would not test the wa­ters with the Jains. Their un­known cadres at­tempted to des­e­crate the Pala­ta­nia Tem­ple in Gu­jarat and the Union gov­ern­ment for many days turned their backs on the Jains whose holi­est of holy pil­grim­age was de­clared as a pil­grim­age cen­tre.

To those un­aware, the man­ner in which Bud­dhism was pushed out of the sub-con­ti­nent is not for­got­ten.

It is com­fort­ing that presently, this ex­per­i­ment has back­fired due to the mas­sive protests by the Jain com­mu­nity. The Union gov­ern­ment has sent an of­fice mem­o­ran­dum to the Jhark­hand gov­ern­ment ask­ing it to stand down from its pur­ported move.

Ear­lier on, in 2019, the Union gov­ern­ment had de­clared the Paras­nath Hills as an eco-sen­si­tive zone but had left it to the Jhark­hand gov­ern­ment to frame tourism fa­cil­i­ties there.  In 2019, the Union Min­istry of En­vi­ron­ment, For­est and Cli­mate Change de­clared an area of up to 25 km around the bor­der of Paras­nath hill and Topchanchi wildlife sanc­tu­ar­ies in Giridih and Dhan­bad dis­tricts wildlife sanc­tu­ar­ies, open­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of mak­ing the place a tourist cen­tre.

Af­ter the ve­he­ment protests, the of­fice mem­o­ran­dum is­sued by the Union gov­ern­ment says, “im­ple­men­ta­tion of pro­vi­sions of clause 3 of the said eco-sen­si­tive zone no­ti­fi­ca­tion is stayed forth­with, in­clud­ing amongst oth­ers all tourism and eco­tourism ac­tiv­i­ties.”

It is dis­tress­ing to note that Sikh and Mus­lim lead­ers chose to re­main silent on the is­sue and lost an op­por­tu­nity to stand shoul­der-to-shoul­der with the Jains in this hour of need. It is very com­fort­ing to note that a lone Mus­lim (lis­ten to him in the video) trav­elled to Mum­bai in sol­i­dar­ity with the Jains.

The World Sikh News and con­sci­en­tious Sikhs ex­press com­plete sol­i­dar­ity with the Jain com­mu­nity and hope that the two gov­ern­ments will ho­n­our their word. We at WSN will con­tinue to lend a voice to up­hold the sanc­tity and de­vo­tion of the Sammed Shik­jarji tem­ple in Jhark­hand and the Pal­i­tana Tem­ple in Gu­jarat.

The Sikh de­vout also needs to wake up. Even the blind can see how the ‘beau­ti­fi­ca­tion’ of the en­vi­rons of Dar­bar Sahib, Am­rit­sar has con­verted it into a tourist cen­tre and how the lack­adaisi­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion of SGPC and the city are un­able to pre­vent the ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties around the area.

It is a pity that the ad­min­is­tra­tors of the Ja­gan­nath Puri Tem­ple in Puri, Orissa took a cue from the Am­rit­sar ex­am­ple, af­ter a state-spon­sored visit to the Golden Tem­ple and then in­dulged in the dev­as­ta­tion of cen­turies-old Mutts of the Hindu faith and that of the Mangu-Mutt -which bore signs of Guru Nanak’s visit there where he re­cited the Aarti en­shrined in Guru Granth Sahib.

The Sikh de­vout daily see the dam­age such moves can do and there is an ur­gent need to protest like the Jains to ini­ti­ate a course cor­rec­tion in and around his­tor­i­cal places in Am­rit­sar, Anand­pur Sahib, Delhi and other places.

These ex­per­i­ments with the faiths of mi­nor­ity na­tion­al­i­ties and com­mu­ni­ties can be stopped if all join hands and cry out like the Jains, “Enough is enough.”