Community
who belongs, how you join, how it is organized
Sky-clad and white-clad.
Digambara monks wear nothing and carry a peacock-feather whisk and a gourd; Svetambara monastics wear white and carry a wool whisk, and some tie a cloth permanently over the mouth. Underneath the clothes sit two real questions — whether the original scriptures survived, and whether a woman can be liberated as a woman — and neither has ever been settled.
⚖ contested within
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The fourfold sangha.
Mahavira organized his community into monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen — and notably, the nuns' order has outnumbered the monks' for most of recorded history.
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The sub-orders.
Svetambaras split three ways: Murtipujak, who worship images; Sthanakvasi, who from the fifteenth century rejected images and meet in plain halls; and Terapanth, founded in 1760, which is unusual in having one acharya over the entire order and which invented the semi-monastic samani rank specifically so that nuns could use vehicles and teach abroad.
⚖ contested within
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Neither half can manage alone.
A monastic owns nothing, cooks nothing, stores nothing and walks everywhere, so cannot last a week without lay households — and feeding one is the most direct religious act available to a householder. The mutual dependency is the design rather than a weakness, and it keeps monks visible and accountable in a way an endowed order would not be.
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Who pays.
Trusts, and public competitive giving. The Anandji Kalyanji Pedhi has run Shatrunjaya and other major Svetambara sites since the eighteenth century. The right to perform particular temple rites is auctioned openly, and donors are named on the walls. Jains are about 0.4 percent of India's population, among its wealthiest communities per head, and among its largest philanthropic givers.
held by most
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The panjrapole.
Animal shelters funded by Jain trade guilds, some running for centuries, taking in working animals too old to work and injured strays. The bird hospital opposite the Red Fort in Delhi treats thousands of birds a year and will not admit carnivores. Most Jain charity goes here and to education, and none of it comes with a conversion attached.
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The mountain, and the fast, in court.
In 2015 the Rajasthan High Court ruled santhara a criminal offence; the Supreme Court stayed it within weeks after nationwide protest, and the case is still open. In 2022 Jharkhand designated Sammed Shikharji an eco-tourism site, and the response — mass rallies across India, monks taking sallekhana in protest — forced a central government reversal in January 2023.
⚖ contested within
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