Kutchi Jain community in Mumbai launches ₹5 crore fund to support families of Jain monks and ensure their well-being | File Photo
Mumbai: The Kutchi Jain community living in Mumbai has announced a support fund of Rs 5 crore for the families of Jain monks facing financial strain. The community has also started creating a record of people hailing from these villages who have embraced monkhood, and will keep a watch on their family’s medical, educational and other daily requirements.
A significant number of Jains embrace monkhood, known as Diksha in the religion, to renounce the worldly desires and attain salvation. The practice of cutting off from the family, friends and all other relations, has often sparked concerns regarding the future of their families, who sometimes lose the only bread earning person in the family.
The Bidada Mumbai Mahajan Trust, comprising of members of the Jain community hailing from Kutch’s Bidada village, has come up with a special fund of Rs 5 crore to support the families of Jain monks. Initially, the fund was planned to be constituted for the families of monks hailing from Bidada, which has given out 78 monks and out of which 46 monks’ family members are alive.
Kutchi Jain community in Mumbai launches ₹5 crore fund to support families of Jain monks and ensure their well-being. | File Photo
The trust had organised a felicitation event on February 16 at Chinchbunder, where 99 family members were felicitated for providing monks to the religion. The community also announced creating a record of the ‘ratnadata families’ which have given out monks and an assistance fund in the name of ‘Jaya Maru Ratnadata Sahyog Nidhi’ to look after their families’ needs.
The idea initiated from the journey of revered Jain monk, Chandrashekhar Vijay Maharaj, who started the renowned Vardhaman Sanskar Dham organisation in Gujarat. He was the only son of his parents and had embraced monkhood at the age of 14 even though he was exposed to the dark realities of prostitution at a young age, since his family lived in a red light area in Grant Road.
However, the trustees of Kutchi Visha Oswal Jain Mahajan, which comprises of all the Jain sub-communities from Kutch, who were also attending the felicitation event, expressed their desires of a similar fund for the community. The community immediately decided that the ‘Jaya Maru Ratnadata Sahyog Nidhi’ will be expanded to cover all the ‘Ratnadata families’ from 112 villages of Kutch.
Jaya Visanji Maru, who is the main sponsor of this fund, also increased their donation by 10 times, while multiple other community members from the community also came forward to donate for the cause. Although the community has decided to start the fund with a donation of Rs 5 crore, it has announced that the fund would be increased to even Rs 25 crore in the future if need arises.
Along with the extension of the fund, the community will also extend the documentation of ‘ratnadata families’ to the entire community, which will then be assisted with the funds for their educational, medical and other daily life requirements.
Talking to The Free Press Journal, Deepak Laxmichand Furia, president of Bidada Mumbai Mahajan Trust, said, “There are multiple families who have lost the hope of a bread winner as their child has embraced monkhood. The task for us is to find such families and add them to our database since most of them do not accept any assistance, even if they live in poor conditions.”
Furia added that the community has already started providing financial support to the ratnadata families wherein a brother of a monk was treated for cataract surgery and the parents of a monk were relieved of their entire debt. Another widow mother, whose son embraced monkhood, will be provided with cash amount every month to sustain her life.
