Two legal and political fights have defined the Jain community's public profile in the last decade. In August 2015 the Rajasthan High Court, on a public interest petition, held that santhara was not an essential religious practice protected by the constitution and amounted to suicide under section 309 of the Indian Penal Code, with those assisting liable for abetment. Protest was immediate and nationwide — silent marches in dozens of cities — and the Supreme Court stayed the judgment within weeks, in August 2015, granting leave to appeal. The stay stands; the substantive question has not been decided. The second is Sammed Shikharji: in 2022 the Jharkhand government's designation of Parasnath Hill as an eco-tourism destination, with proposals including a ropeway, produced the largest Jain mobilisation in living memory, with mass rallies, and monks — including at least one who died — undertaking sallekhana in protest. In January 2023 the central environment ministry ordered tourism activity halted and reaffirmed the site's protected pilgrimage status. Both episodes show a very small community with unusual capacity to act politically, and both turn on the same underlying question of who decides what a religious practice is.