From Bhikshu to Mahashraman

The clearest and best documented stretch of the Terapanth succession runs through its two most consequential twentieth century holders. Acharya Tulsi, who led the order for more than five decades, took it in a markedly public direction, founding the Anuvrat movement in 1949 to promote small, practicable ethical vows for lay people of any faith rather than the full monastic vows, and establishing Jain Vishva Bharati as an educational institution carrying the order's teaching beyond its own monastic community. His successor, Acharya Mahapragya, continued that outward orientation, writing extensively on Jain philosophy, ethics and a meditation system he termed Preksha Dhyana, and remained a visible figure in Indian public life until his death in 2010.

Mahapragya was succeeded by the current Acharya, Mahashraman, continuing the order's unbroken single-holder pattern into the present. Because the Terapanth keeps no competing lineage and no regional acharyas, its head at any given moment is uniquely identifiable in a way most Jain monastic authority is not, which is part of why the office is treated in religious studies literature as a clean case study of Jain monastic governance rather than merely one office among several. The names of every intermediate Acharya between Bhikshu and Tulsi are attested in Terapanth institutional history but are not repeated here with specific dates this agent could not independently confirm.