The White-Clad Discipline

Svetambara Jain monks and nuns affirm the wearing of simple white robes; the name Svetambara means "white-clad." They hold that a minimal garment is compatible with the vow of non-possession and that clothing is not itself an insurmountable attachment, so that the ascetic may keep a few white cloths along with a small set of permitted implements such as an alms-bowl and a broom to sweep insects from the path. Nuns and monks alike follow the practice. Svetambara Jainism is itself further divided over whether temple worship of images is legitimate.

The majority Murtipujaka ("image-worshipping") Svetambaras maintain elaborate temple worship of Tirthankara images, while the Sthanakvasi sect, arising in the seventeenth century, and the Terapanth, a further eighteenth-century reform breakaway founded by Acharya Bhikshu, reject image worship entirely as a later corruption unsupported by the earliest scripture, gathering instead in plain meeting halls (sthanaks) without images for prayer and teaching. This iconoclastic reform movement, distinct from and later than the original Digambara-Svetambara split, shows that the white-clad tradition is not itself doctrinally uniform beyond its shared position on monastic clothing and women's liberation.