If agriculture is a sin……..

-Mahavir Sanglikar

A stupid discussion takes place in some Jains again and again: Should Jains do agriculture? The Jains discussing this issue belong to a specific group, i.e. the Baniyas (Trading community), who always avoid all productive activities and live on unproductive occupations like trade, money lending, commission agency, share market, lottery, hawala etc.

These people are self centered and do not know anything about the ‘other’ followers of Jainism. For these people, Jain community is just their own small ethnic group.

In fact, a large number of followers of Jainism belong to non-trading community. The highest number of followers of Jainism are cultivators and they are spread all over India, but especially in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Rajsthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Haryana and Punjab. To make this sentence simple, we can say that there are Jain farmers in all states except Gujarat. But this is also not true, as there are many Jain farmers in Gujarat also.

Jainism is not a private property of any ethnic group. So no one has a right to define Jainism according to the traditions in their tiny group.

Jains who think that agriculture is a sin, should immediately stop eating anything that is produced by farmers, as eating agricultural products also becomes a sin according to Jain definitions of sins. They should stop trading food grains and other agricultural products. They should not invest a single Rupee in the industries based on agriculture. They should also try to pressurize their state Government and ban farming.

The real reason behind opposing agriculture is that this occupation doesn’t give a good amount of money. It requires hard work. When their will be a lot of money with less work in agriculture, these greedy people will start to say, “Rishabh Dev, our first Teerthankar was the inventor of agriculture! Agriculture is the original culture of mankind! Agriculture is Jain Culture”.

These people are the real enemies of Jainism. We can defeat them only by changing social composition. We should push them into minority by initiating more and more people in Jainism, from non trading communities all over India. Only this can save Jainism from these non-violent cold blooded killers of Jainism.


Also see:

What Discussions the Extremist Jains Do?

Customs and Traditions in Jain Community
Encourage Young Jains to Join Armed Forces