‘Hum do, hamare teen’: Jains seek to have more children

MUMBAI: Worried by a slight decline in the percentage of the Jain population in relation to the total population of India, the community has rolled out sops for couples who will have more than two children.

The Jain population was 42 lakh of the total Indian population of 102 crore in 2001; ten years later, the Census of 2011 revealed, it rose to 44 lakh, with India’s total population also rising to 120 crore. So though in terms of absolute numbers, there has been nominal growth, in terms of percentage of the overall national population there has been a decline of 0.03%—from 0.40% in 2001 to 0.37% in 2011.


Also, according to the latest National Family Health Survey, the fertility rate (average number of children a woman can have during her childbearing years) among Jains is 1.2, while for Hindus it is 2.13 and for Muslims 2.6.

In a meeting of the Digambar Jain Mahasamiti, the apex body of Digambar Jains, in Indore last week, a call was made for ‘Hum do hamare teen’, an unambiguous appeal to young Jain couples to have more children. The Samiti has also announced financial assistance for couples who will have more than two children and counselling for couples to reduce cases of divorce within the community.

“We want couples to think about this issue. The Samiti has decided to bear the cost of educating the third child,” Ashok Badjatiya, national president of the Samiti which has a presence in 16 states, said.

“There are many reasons why young couples do not want to have more children. One is financial implications, so if we as a community can help take care of that, we could encourage them to have more children,” Badjatiya said. He said the well-off members of the community would soon come together and create a pool of funds for the purpose and also devise a scheme.

For now the sops will be available only to Digambar Jains, but the plan is to eventually extend these to other Jains too. Digambara is one of the two schools of Jainism, the other being Swetambara; those who follow the Digambara school are called Digambar Jains.

Jainesh Jhanjhari, another member of the Samiti, said Jainism is a very old religion, and if the community’s numbers suffer, it would be a loss. He also said that efforts are being made to organise workshops for Jain youngsters of marriageable age to counsel them about life after marriage, so that cases of divorce could be brought down. “The number of divorce cases are on the rise, and most of the times separation happens because small things were not handled properly, resulting in an escalation. We will also have a grievance redressal mechanism so that Jain youth can handle these challenges (related to marriage) well,” Jhanjhari said.