ANIL KUMAR KHATER-EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEMBER LADNUN NAGRIK PARISHAD-KOLKATA(LADNUN)
February 20, 2008
By Anil Kumar Khater
Acharya Tulsi, the man, his mission and his motives
Some years ago, when work in the Indian parliament came to a screeching standstill following a boycott by opposition parties protesting against the official "whitewash" of the Joint parliamentary Committee report on a stocks scam, Acharya Tulsi, the most high profile Jain guru of them all, was asked to mediate. He succeeded in breaking the impasse, which could have brought the government down, using a singularly unlikely strategy: talking to the parties concerned about anekantavada, the Jain doctrine of non-absolutism, which holds that all human judgments and perceptions of truth are only partially valid, and that one must accommodate points of view other than one's own.
When asked to elucidate the doctrine, Tulsi responded like a Zen master. He picked up a table clock, the only valuable in his spartan room, and asked rhetorically: "Is it good?" Obviously, the correct answer is that it is superior to many clocks and inferior to many others. The point he was trying to make is that it is also made of plastic and glass; further, basically, it is an arrangement of electrons and protons and soon. Therefore, a...
Acharya Tulsi, the man, his mission and his motives