Fashion Designer to Become a Jain Ascetic

-Srinivas Sirnoorkar,Gulbarga

In February, a fashion designer, his wife and their young son would be expected to travel to Dubai for the month-long shopping festival, Bali in Indonesia, or Cape Town in South Africa.

Instead, in eight weeks, couturier Kiran Maru, his wife Jyothi and son Bhavya are taking a journey into Sanyas (renunciation).

Thirty-six-year-old Kiran has decided to free himself from worldly pleasures and pressures. He, wife Jyothi (34) and eight-year-old Bhavya are all set to become Jain ascetics by renouncing all their material possessions. Their move towards asceticism has brought great joy to the Jain community here and elsewhere.

The three will attain the highest order of spiritualism for the noble cause of preaching and propagating one of the oldest religions on February 23, 2011, with Acharya Bhagawant Kalapuran Surishwar formally initiating them into the ascetic world at Adhoi in Kuchch district of Gujarat.

Kiran from Adoni in Andhra Pradesh and Jyothi, a Kannadiga from Belgaum, married 10 years ago and are settled in Mumbai.

“They were passionately discussing the tenets of Jainism and were planning to take sanyas to attain moksha (liberation) which is the ultimate goal in our religion. Over the last couple of years, they have been preparing for the ultimate by renouncing one pleasure after another of the material world,” said Manilal Shah, Kiran’s cousin.

The Marus were given a rousing reception by the Sankeshwar Parshvanath Jain Sangh when they were here recently to seek the blessings of their elders before taking up sanyas.

The three Shwetambars have already undertaken the ‘aparigriha vruta’, a religious ritual of not accepting anything from anybody, and have been undergoing vigorous training of the life of sanyas ashrama. After attaining sanyas, each of them will be moving independently all over India to preach and spread the universal values of Jainism. For the rest of their life, they will have to live on the alms and eat only once a day.

Manilal Shah said Bhavya, who has studied up to third standard, has also been given due training and he has been mentally prepared to take up ‘bala sanyas’ to become an infant ascetic. Ten years ago, a young commerce graduate Sapna from Gulbarga had taken the Deeksha.

'Child dikshas may have guardians soon'

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court on Thursday admitted a petition filed in 2006 by a baldiksha's Indore-based parents challenging the power of the
Child Welfare Committee (CWC) to look into the life of a sadhvi.

A bench of Justices D K D Deshmukh and R S Mohite, while hearing the arguments, indicated the possibility of making compulsory the appointment of a guardian for such baldikshas. "We may make it necessary for a district judge to appoint a guardian for every minor who takes diksha (renunciation of the world as practised among Jains),'' observed Justice Deshmukh. At one point, Justice Mohite seemed unhappy with the fate that greeted baldikshas.

Senior counsel Rafiq Dada, assisted by advocate Sanjay Jain, said the court could not interfere with the practice of diksha.


An NGO had complained to the CWC, which had opined that the baldikshas required better looking after. But the parents said their daughter had chosen to take diksha and no one else could intervene in the age-old tradition followed by the community.


The court had appointed a panel to interview the baldiksha, NGO counsel Mihir Desai said. A report submitted to the court held that the six-year-old's diksha was "clearly a decision taken for her without thinking about the consequences'' and "not in her best interests''.

(From TOI)