Centre for the Study of Social Systems
School of Social Sciences
CSSS Colloquium
John E. Cort
(Judy Gentili Chair, Denison University, USA)
Will be presenting a paper on
Jain Identity and the Public Sphere in Nineteenth-Century India
November 02, 2017 (Thursday), 3.00 pm
CSSS Committee Room (Room No: 13), SSS-II
Abstract: In this talk, I look at two nineteenth-century Jain disputes, to show how the processes of globalization and modernity (or, better, globalizations and modernities) combined to generate a new pan-Indian concept of being “Jain.” I argue that Jains responded to two overlapping processes of modernity, brought to India by British colonialism, in ways that resulted in new self-understandings of what it meant to be Jain, and therefore to be members of a religion called “Jainism.” One of these was the gradual expansion of the British legal system and the concepts of English law, which introduced new concepts of both the rights-bearing “individual” and of the communities to which such individuals belonged. The other was an intertwined set of new technologies of travel, communication and dissemination of information that linked hitherto widely dispersed and regionally heterogeneous groups of Jains into a single pan-Indian community.
Bio: John E. Cort is Professor of Asian and Comparative Religions at Denison University (Granville, Ohio, USA), where he also teaches in the International Studies Program, and holds the Judy Gentili Chair in International Studies. His research focuses on the Jains of western and north India, and is the author of Jains in the World: Religious Values and Ideology in India (2001) and Framing the Jina: Narratives of Icons and Idols in Jain History (2010), as well as editor of Open Boundaries: Jain Communities and Cultures in Indian History (1998).
