A Defining Difference

Nudity is one of the two great issues that divided Jainism into its Digambara and Svetambara branches around the early centuries CE, the Svetambara ("white-clad") holding that monks and nuns should wear simple white robes. For the Digambara, clothing itself is an attachment incompatible with the highest renunciation, and the possibility of complete nudity is bound up with their further view about who can attain liberation.

The affirmation thus marks a fundamental point of Jain sectarian identity rather than a mere difference of custom. Because full nudity is such a demanding threshold, Digambara monasticism maintains graduated ranks below the fully initiated muni: an kshullak wears three garments and an ailak a single loincloth, each stage marking progress in renunciation before a monk is considered ready for the complete unclothed vow. Digambara munis remain a small population relative to Svetambara monastics, and their public nudity has occasionally caused friction with Indian civil authorities and public order regulations in some jurisdictions, an issue Digambara religious leaders have generally negotiated through appeals to India's constitutional protection of religious freedom, treating the ascetic's nakedness as an inseparable religious observance rather than an act of public indecency.