Anuvrat Movement

Until about five decades ago, India was under the grip of political tales. Some reflective great personalities resolved to free the country from the grip of slavery, and after their untiring efforts, India became independent. The unity that was in the mind of the people of India, and the harmony among themselves, for the attainment of the independence, gradually and after the independence came to an end. As a result, along with fundamental problems like Casteism, Untouchability, Communalism, Poverty etc., the longing for the post, provinciality and linguistic disputes began to emerge. And this resulted in the decline of morality. In such a situation, the need for a moral movement, i.e. a peaceful movement, was felt. Acharya Tulsi, who considered morality as an essential quality of human life and by which all social, economic, political and religious problems could be given a solution, gave a slogan of ‘Adopt Real Freedom’ on the first Independence Day. By “Freedom,” Acharya Shri Tulsi meant moral development, whose practical or experimental form is the Anuvrat Movement'’.

What Anuvrat implies-

The word Anuvrat is composed of two words – ‘Anu’ and ‘Vrat’. ‘Anu’ means small and ‘Vrat’ means vows. So the word Anuvrat togetherly means a code of conduct of small vows. From an emotional point of view, Anuvrat means:

the process of character formation,
the code of conduct of human life,
the use of communityless religion.

In Jainism, the five Mahavratas, which have been conceived for a saintly life, given the name of Anuvrata for a social or common person by giving them a practical form which any person can take off in his life and upgrade his life. These are Non-Violence (Ahimsa), Truth (Satya), Non-Stealing (Asteya), Chastity (Brahmacharya) and Non-Possession/Non-Attachment (Aparigraha).

Non-Violence means neither to hurt nor to cause any trouble or harm to any living being through mind, words or deeds by methods of self-commitment, commissioning by others and consenting.

Truth means not to speak gross untruth, neither to inspire others to do so nor to speak such a truth so that religion gets in danger or cause any other calamity.

Non-Stealing means not to take or to touch someone’s else property without their permission, also not to take any forgotten or fallen property which is not ours.

Chastity means to get in touch with one’s own soul.

Non-Possession means to limit the acquisition of material things like money, house etc. for a lifetime, neither to desire more than need, nor to have attachment towards materialistic world.

Initiation and objectives of Anuvrat Movement-

Acharya Tulsi, a great Saint who was born on 20 October 1914 and also became the ninth ordinance (Anushaashta) of Terapanth Dharma Sangh, started the movement called Anuvrat or Anuvrat movement on 2 March 1949 in the town of Sardarsehar, Rajasthan with the following objectives:

To eradicate poverty
To eradicate social evils like Dowry system, Untouchability prevention etc. by means of awakening and campaigning
To develop consciousness towards environment
To build an addiction-free society
To awaken the feeling of non-possession to save the mother Earth.

Therefore, with these objectives, the Anuvrat movement emerged to reconcile fragmented humanity on the basis of differences of caste, religion, language and emphasized on the objective of human ethics without discrimination.

References

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