page_title: Anekantavada
section_title: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
hierarchical_section_title: Anekantavada / Influence / Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
caption_attribution_description: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on Juhu Beach, Mumbai, May 1944.
context_page_description: Anekāntavāda refers to the Jain doctrine about metaphysical truths that emerged in ancient India. It states that the ultimate truth and reality is complex and has multiple aspects. Anekantavada has also been interpreted to mean non-absolutism, "intellectual Ahimsa", religious pluralism, as well as a rejection of fanaticism that leads to terror attacks and mass violence. Some scholars state that modern revisionism has attempted to reinterpret anekantavada with religious tolerance, openmindedness and pluralism.
  According to Jainism, no single, specific statement can describe the nature of existence and the absolute truth. This knowledge, it adds, is comprehended only by the Arihants. Other beings and their statements about absolute truth are incomplete, and at best a partial truth. All knowledge claims, according to the anekāntavāda doctrine must be qualified in many ways, including being affirmed and denied. Anekāntavāda is a fundamental doctrine of Jainism.
  The origins of anekāntavāda can be traced back to the teachings of Mahāvīra, the 24th Jain Tīrthankara.
context_section_description: Mahatma Gandhi mentioned Anekantavada and Syadvada in the journal Young India – 21 Jan 1926. According to Jeffery D. Long – a scholar of Hindu and Jain studies, the Jain Syadvada doctrine helped Gandhi explain how he reconciled his commitment to the "reality of both the personal and impersonal aspects of Brahman", and his view of "Hindu religious pluralism":
  I am an Advaitist and yet I can support Dvaitism (dualism). The world is changing every moment, and is therefore unreal, it has no permanent existence. But though it is constantly changing, it has a something about it which persists and it is therefore to that extent real. I have therefore no objection to calling it real and unreal, and thus being called an Anekāntavadi or a Syādvadi. But my Syādvāda is not the Syādvāda of the learned, it is peculiarly my own. I cannot engage in a debate with them. It has been my experience that I am always true from my point of view, and am often wrong from the point of view of my honest critics. I know that we are both right from our respective points of view. And this knowledge saves me from attributing motives to my opponents or critics. (...) My Anekāntavāda is the result of the twin doctrine of Satyagraha and ahiṃsā.
caption: Gandhi used the Jain concept of Anekantavada to explain his views.[95]
exif: {}