Sadhvi Balaji sits on her bed surrounded by stacks of Jain literature and Scriptures. Study is fundamental to Balaji’s religious practice. Photo by Arielle Dreher.
AHMEDABAD—When she was a young Jain nun, Sadhvi Chandra Balaji, would spend her day walking from house to house and village to village with other nuns. Such wanderings are a key element of Jain monasticism.
But now that she is in her 60’s and suffering from chronic back pain, Balaji spends most of her day in a room full of tall stacks of books and paper. A small twin bed sits in the corner and two plastic chairs are brought in for guests.
On a recent spring day, Balaji sat on her bed, her legs hanging over the side, likely because of her back pain. Her “sisters” are a group of 18 other Jain nuns, known as sadhvis, who move around Ahmedabad and stay at Jain household, usually together. Balaji uses her phone to keep in touch with them and sees them at the temple sometimes when she goes.
“We talk with each other and study together,” Balaji said. “But only about Jain holy books—we think, prathikaram, and study together.”
For every Jain monk there are three nuns. Manisha Sethi in her book Escaping the World looked specifically at why this is the case. Jainism denied widows the right to marry, so it was originally thought that widows could make up a large percentage of sadhvis, but Sethi found that this was not the case. Most female ascetics she met entered the ascetic life in an unmarried state. Other researchers had speculated that poverty or personal circumstance led women into a religious life. Most of the nuns she spoke to for her book thought these explanations belittled their spiritual pursuits and motivations.
Sethi settled on a more nuanced understanding of why women become Jain ascetics: as an escape from a patriarchal structure and an alternative to the societal role of householding. Asceticism provides access to better and higher education, while endorsing the “natural” qualities of womanhood that emotionally connect easier to spirituality. Sethi also found a majority of sadhvis had female relatives who were also ascetics.
Women can achieve a higher status in their community and with their lives by following this religious path. The reasons for the dominance of sadhvis thus lands in a gendered discourse Sethi writes. In an odd way, by buying the patriarchal view of women, sadhvis are the only free and individuated women since they believe the other way of life requires submission and “rendered inferior” by the larger community.
In the Svetambara sect of Jainism, women (like men) are believed to be capable of attaining moksha, ultimate liberation from life on earth. Sadhvis are drawn to a life of study, celibacy and vagrancy in order to gain liberation from humanity and this life.
The stacks in Balaji’s room were not only hers but also a lot of the sisters’ books and notes as well. Despite her setback, Balaji was incredibly positive about her conditions. She is working on a large translation project. Jain scriptures were written in Sanskirt and Prakrit, ancient Indo-Aryan languages. Balaji is translating Jain holy books into Gujurati.
Balaji was born 62 years ago and raised in Mumbai in a Jain family. When she was only 17 years old, she decided to become an ascetic, renouncing the world, taking on monastic vows and leaving her family. The transition from shravak (Jain layperson) to sadhvi took about eight years.
At the end of eight years of studying and slowly growing accustomed to the monastic way of life, Balaji had her diksa, a right of passage ceremony and Jain community celebration, where she shaved her hair (now her hair is kept short by plucking it out), changed into her white linen garment with no stitching and received her rajoharan (the broom Jains use to sweep insects out of harm’s way). Diksa is almost like a wedding ceremony, and many scholars have said this because of the elaborate rituals performed as well as the amount of money poured into the celebrations.
Balaji became a sadhvi when she was 25 years old.
Sadhvis take on all of the monastic vows and adhere to all of the strict Jain dietary principles and rules of conduct for life. Before diksa, the ascetics work their way up to the intensity of the rigid rules. Balaji said that by focusing on vision, knowledge and knowing the way to attain moksha, life as a sadhvi comes naturally.
“Jainism is an inner experience,” she said.
According to Sethi’s research there are currently 8,946 nuns and 2,572 monks. 71 percent of the 11,518 total Jain ascetics are women. This number is a bit lower than 1999 estimates cited by Jain scholar Peter Flugel who cited female ascetics in Jainism at 76.3 percent. The sadhvi population seems to have dropped somewhat in the past 15 years, but females are still overwhelmingly the majority.
Jain ascetic practice, however, is mostly characterized by the outer displays of behavior. Sadhus and sadhvis are not allowed to use electricity (the light in Balaji’s room was not turned on by her) or public transportation. They carry a wooden plate and utensil to eat on, and they do not bathe. The dominating concept of Jainism is ahimsa or nonviolence. The Jain diet is set in the timeframe between sunrise and sunset and does not include consuming any living animals or even rooted vegetables, so Jain ascetics are not allowed to eat late at night or early in the morning.
Balaji said she is not frustrated that she is stuck in Ahmedabad, and she has a routine now that she is happy with. The Jain family who owns the room she is staying in feeds Balaji their leftovers, in line with Jain practice. Jain ascetics are not allowed to prepare food (because you are still ending organisms’ lives), and they rely on Jain shravaks [explain] to provide shelter and hospitality. During the year, except during the rainy season, Jain ascetics travel together and wander from Jain household and town to the next, with no possessions besides those they carry with them.
Balaji wakes up at 4 a.m. every day and chants the Namaskar Mantra and performs other prayers at home and then goes to the temple for darshan. She then returns to her room to eat, study and translate. She will sing noontime songs at home and speak with her other sadhvi sisters about Jain scriptures and theology. Study is at the heart of Balaji’s path to moksha.
“I believe that by studying I can attain moksha,” she said.
**Interview was conducted through a translator.