Jains are a small community. The Indian census of 2011 recorded about 4.5 million, roughly 0.4 per cent of the population, with the largest concentrations in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Karnataka, and a diaspora in Britain, North America, East Africa and elsewhere. Recorded literacy and income sit well above the Indian average, a pattern usually connected to the community's long concentration in commerce.
Its influence has been out of proportion to its size. The Jain elaboration of nonviolence entered wider Indian thought early and has been drawn on repeatedly since. Jain patronage produced major architecture, including the marble temples at Mount Abu, the hilltop complex at Shatrunjaya and the monolithic figure at Shravanabelagola, along with manuscript libraries that preserved works other traditions lost.
Anekantavada, the doctrine of many-sidedness, is the tradition's distinctive contribution to Indian philosophy. It holds that any statement about reality is made from a standpoint and holds only with respect to it, and it is formalised in syadvada, the practice of qualifying assertions accordingly. It is not relativism: Jains hold that there is a truth of the matter, and only that no single partial view captures it.
Contemporary questions include the maintenance of a mendicant order under modern conditions, since Jain ascetics travel on foot and do not use vehicles, and the legal status of sallekhana, the practice of fasting to death undertaken at the end of life or in the face of unavoidable decline. An Indian high court held it unlawful in 2015 and the Supreme Court stayed that ruling the same year. Jains distinguish it from suicide on the ground that it is undertaken without passion and requires the sanction of a teacher; the point remains contested outside the community.