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ABSTRACT
The article will investigate the contemporary Jain diasporic experience through an analysis of online narratives on ‘diaspora Jains’ and ‘diaspora Jainism’. Over the past two decades, digital media have become an important new arena to imagine, construct, and share the diasporic experience, both for members of the diasporic community and for Jains living in India. This paper will elaborate on and compare different narratives on the Jain diasporic experience found online, identify recurring themes, and question where and why specific discourses on diaspora are propagated. The juxtaposition of ‘Indian’ and ‘diasporic’ narratives illustrates how digital media have brought the diasporic periphery in closer contact with the religious centre, and how this renewed connection can spark subtle negotiations and heated debates about what it means to be ‘in diaspora’.
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) under grant G002215N.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on contributor
Tine Vekemans is currently working as a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Languages and Cultures of Ghent University in Belgium. She obtained a PhD in April 2019 for her research on the Jain diaspora and new media, which was part of the FWO-funded project ‘Online religion in a transnational context. Representing and practicing Jainism in diasporic communities’. Her publications discuss different aspects of the Jain diasporic experience and the role of digital media within them.
Notes
1 For a thorough introduction to Jainism, see Dundas (Citation2002) or Long (Citation2009).
2 More specifically, it was the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, enacted June 30, 1968 that made it easier for South Asians to come to the US.
3 Estimates of the number of Jains in North America vary from 45,000+ (Dundas Citation2002, 271), over 50,000 (Jain Citation1998, 295) and 60,000 (Kumar Citation1996, 103–112), to 150,000 (Jain Citation2011, 99). Some respondents estimated the numbers to be significantly higher still. Estimates of the number of Jains in the U.K. range from 25 to 30,000 (Dundas Citation2002, 271) to 50,000 (Jain Citation2011, 96). As most of my U.K. respondents thought 30,000 was correct, I will assume P.C. Jain’s figure to be unrealistically high.
4 The research-project ‘Digital religion in a transnational context: Representing and practicing Jainism in diasporic communities’ was made possible by a grant from the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO). It was coordinated and supervised by Prof. Dr Eva De Clercq at University of Ghent, Belgium.
5 It analyses excerpts of the website-corpus as it was gathered in 2017/2018, and app-descriptions of the mobile application corpus as gathered in 2018/2019.
6 However, the ascetic presence in the Jain diaspora is still limited and exceptional in nature. The proposal to create a more embedded, local, ascetic order, which – although keeping to the rules that govern Jain ascetic life as much as possible – adapts to Western customs and situations has been launched by London-based Natubhai Shah under the working title Western order of Jainism (Citation1996, 23–33).
7 Examples of issues around which such campaigns were launched are Jain minority status, the legalization of ritual fasting unto death (sallekhanā), and most recently the protection of the pilgrimage centre at Śikharjī.
8 JAINA (N.N.). "Diaspora Committee Mission Statement." Accessed 15 October 2019. https://www.jaina.org/page/DiasporaHome.
9 JAINA (N.N.). "Diaspora Committee Mission Statement." Accessed 10 October 2019. https://www.jaina.org/page/DiasporaHome.
10 JAINA (N.N.). "New to North America." Accessed 11 November 2018. www.jaina.org/page/newtonorthamerica.
11 Jainworld (N.N.) "Home." Accessed 15 October 2019. https://jainworld.com/.
12 JAINpedia is a project launched by the Institute of Jainology (IoJ). The Institute of Jainology was registered as a charitable trust in the U.K. in 1986, informed by a growing need to represent the Jain community in international, national, and local politics and society. Since its inception, it has been active in interfaith and political lobbying, as well as attempting to make Jainism more known and visible within the larger community. Although IoJ maintains an office in India, where it has, for example, supported the efforts to obtain minority status for Jains, most of their work is international or U.K.-based.
13 Rishabh and Jalpa Parekh. 2013. "Jainism Simplified." Google Play, vers. 1.0.0. Accessed 10 September 2019. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rishabh.jainism.
14 Jainsite (N.N.) "About us." Accessed 15 October 2019. https://jainsite.com/jainsite/about-us/.
15 Jainteerth (N.N.) "About us." Accessed 15 October 2019. http://jainteerth.com/about-jainteerth/.
16 For example, IoJ’s oneJAIN project: IoJ (N.N.). Accessed 15 October 2019. https://www.jainology.org/onejain/.
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