Some Jains say that Krishna is still living in hell – is this true?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So according to Jain Jain conception Krishna is still living in hell. Is this true? Actually you see Jainism and Buddhism these two religions emerged in India as a result of the exploitative caste Brahmins who were monopolizing all power and privilege and neglecting the lower castes.
There are many reasons but this is the main reason. And Jainism and Buddhism they attracted a lot of people especially from the lower caste and later on they spread also rapidly. Now because the Vedic culture at that time was so prominent so Jainism and Buddhism they wanted to be ideologically autonomous.
But still most of the people who became Jains and Buddhists Jains and Buddhists they were they were coming from a culture that was very deeply steeped in Vedic imagery. And that is why originally these religions were meant to serve a particular purpose of elevating people to basic good living, moral living. And in general if you see Buddha himself did not talk much about ideology and Mahavira, Dada, Tendulkar also did not talk about much philosophy.
Their focus was primarily on living in the mode of goodness, live properly. And the subsequent thinkers within those traditions they came up with various ideological interpretations of the teachings of their founders. So what they tried to do is in these religions because they wanted ideological autonomy and the followers were still steeped in the imagery coming from the Vedic culture they often reinvented retold in a fictional way the stories which were known to those followers.
So for example there is a Jain Ramayana and the Jain Ramayana now what happens is the basic storyline is more or less similar but throughout his forest stay Ram keeps meeting Jain sages and he gets good advice from those Jain sages. And at the end when Sita is taken by the earth at that time Ram becomes enlightened and becomes a Jain. So this is basically a fictionalized retelling of the Ramayana which was done by later Jain thinkers to try to subordinate a person who was very popular within the people at that time to say that he was also a Jain.
So this is actually, Christians also did this. For example what Christians did is when Christianity came from the Middle East to Europe, to Greek now Greece was a place of learning and there the Socrates, Plato, Aristotle were big philosophers as compared to that the Christian theology the teaching of the New Testament was very simplistic. So Saint Augustine and others they integrated the two Greek philosophy with Biblical theology.
But then how could they take Greek theology? Because Jesus has not taught that. So Saint Augustine and other Christians, Christian teachers they posthumously appropriated Socrates, Plato and Aristotle as pre-Christ Christians. Pre-Christ Christians.
They were not Christians actually but they appropriated him like that. So in general when a religion wants to spread quite often they try to appropriate the pre-existing imagery that is there into their own storyline. So like that in the Jain spin that was given to the Mahabharata the idea is that some of the activities that Krishna did in the Mahabharata they from a moral perspective appear to be wrong.
Now in an earlier class I discussed about how morality is not just contextual. Morality is not categorical. It is contextual.
What is right and what is wrong will vary according to time and place and circumstance. And Krishna did not act immorally. What Krishna acted was actually according to higher principle of dharma in those situations.
But because Krishna acted immorally so some later people in the Jain tradition they spun the Ramayana around and they said that because he acted immorally so he has to go to hell. So this is a completely fictionalized rendition of the Mahabharata. And actually Krishna is the supreme lord and he eternally resides in the spiritual world and periodically he descends to the world in various forms to elevate people.