ATNA: Bihar Rajya Digambar Jain Nyas Board president Ramgopal Jain here
on Thursday said the NCERT had wrongly got written in its textbooks that
Tirthankar Mahavir was founder of the Jain religion.
Bhagwan Mahavir was himself the 24th Tirthankar of the Jain religion, and not
its founder, he said. Accordingly, the decision of Union human resources
development minister Murli Manohar Joshi to revise NCERT books was absolultely
correct and an important task in hand to be accomplished, he added.
Thanking Joshi for this step, he said the founder of the Jain religion was
Bhagwan Adinath. After him, 22 Tirthankars had contributed to flowering of this
religion, and Mahavir was the 24th Tirthankar.
He said Bihar has been a pious land for the Jains. Vaishali, Pawapuri,
Champanagar and Madhuban constitute different Tirths of the Jain religion. The
NCERT ought to have corrected itself earlier, he said. Terming Bhagwan Mahavir
as founder of the Jain religion amounted to hurting sentiments of the Jains, he
said.
According to him, associating saffron with party politics was improper. In the
Jain religion and culture, saffron colour is considered auspicious, he said,
adding that saffron dhwaja unfurl atop Jain temples. He criticised people who
termed the move to revise NCERT textbooks as Talibanisation of the NCERT. “The
cultural history of the country cannot be linked to party politics,” he added.