Shrimad Rajchandra and Mahatma Gandhi

Shrimad Rajchandra, a Jain mystic, poet and philosopher of nineteenth-century Gujarat, is remembered both for his own profound spiritual attainment and for the deep influence he exercised over Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who would become the leader of India's freedom movement and the world's foremost apostle of non-violence. The relationship between the young Gandhi and the Jain sage forms a significant chapter in the modern history of Jainism and in the shaping of Gandhian thought.

Shrimad Rajchandra, who lived from 1867 to 1901, was born at Vavaniya in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat into a family of Jain and Vaishnava background. He displayed extraordinary intellectual and spiritual gifts from an early age, reputed to possess a phenomenal memory and a precocious capacity for religious insight. Though he lived the life of a layman, engaged for a time in the family business of jewellery and trade in Mumbai, he was above all a spiritual seeker of remarkable depth, devoted to the pursuit of self-realisation according to the Jain understanding of the soul.

His teaching, expressed in letters, poems and philosophical writings in Gujarati, centred on the nature of the self, the distinction between the eternal soul and the material body, and the path to liberation through self-knowledge, detachment and ethical discipline. His most celebrated work, a poem often known as the Atmasiddhi, expounds the reality of the soul, its bondage and its liberation in a concise and moving form. Rooted in the Jain tradition, especially in the mystical Digambara current associated with Kundakunda, his thought also drew on the wider Indian spiritual heritage and emphasised inner realisation over external ritual.

Gandhi met Shrimad Rajchandra in Mumbai in 1891, on the young lawyer's return from his studies in England, and was profoundly impressed by his learning, his equanimity and the evident sincerity of his renunciation amid worldly life. During the years of Gandhi's spiritual searching, including the period of his early struggles in South Africa, he corresponded with Rajchandra, seeking guidance on the deepest questions of religion, the nature of the soul, the meaning of liberation, and the comparative claims of the different faiths. Gandhi later acknowledged Rajchandra as one of the three principal influences on his life and thought, alongside the writings of Tolstoy and Ruskin, and described him as a spiritual guide who had steadied him at a formative time.

The influence of Rajchandra on Gandhi was significant in several respects. The Jain sage reinforced Gandhi's commitment to ahimsa, non-violence, and to truth, satya, which would become the twin pillars of Gandhi's philosophy and method. He deepened Gandhi's appreciation of the ideals of detachment, self-discipline and the primacy of moral and spiritual concerns over material ones. Through Rajchandra, the Jain emphasis on non-violence and the many-sidedness of truth entered into the stream of thought that Gandhi would develop into his distinctive philosophy of satyagraha.

Shrimad Rajchandra died young, in 1901, at the age of thirty-three, but his influence endured through his writings and through the community of devotees who revered him. Centres and ashrams dedicated to his teaching continue to flourish in India and abroad, preserving his mystical and philosophical legacy.

The meeting of the Jain sage and the future Mahatma thus links the ancient Jain principle of non-violence to one of the most consequential movements of the modern age, demonstrating the living relevance of the Jain tradition and its capacity to shape the moral imagination of the twentieth century.