Unlikely Departures: a Jain Mendicant’s Decision to Travel Overseas

This article presents parts of the travels of two Jain mendicants around the Western Indian Ocean in the mid-1940s. After a thorough introduction into Jainism as it came to Aden and East Africa with nineteenth-century traders and businessmen, as well as into the different mobilities afforded lay Jains on the one hand, and mendicants on the other, it unpacks the decision-making process that preceded the departure of two yati s: a departure from the docks at Mumbai, but also a departure from customary mendicant behavior. Through a close reading of their travelogue Āphrikā māṁ pravās varṇan , this article reveals the Jain tradition as a living religion, where processes of adaptation, reform, and counterreform are ever ongoing within both the lay and the mendicant community: the recently established overseas Jain communities, the traveling yati s, and the “reformist” samvegī sādhūs all represent intertwined and at times seemingly contradictory ways in which Jains must and do succeed in operationalizing the Jain tradition in the geographical and historical context they inhabit.