An Indian religion of karma and reincarnation, often confused with Hinduism. There are between 5m and 8m Jains in the world, mostly in India.
Yashwant Malaiya, a computer-science professor, has calculated around 160,000 Jains in America in 2019, or less than 0.05% of the population. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished race-based quotas, and the first wave of Indian migrants included many doctors and pharmacists. California allowed foreign-degree holders to practise without retraining, and family-reunification rules brought further arrivals. By the late 1970s the Los Angeles area was home to a tight-knit Jain community of about 65 families (rising to about 1,500 by the 2020s). In 1979 they formed the Jain Centre of Southern California.
A carved teakwood replica of a Jain shrine near Palitana, Gujarat, was commissioned by British tea planters in Calcutta in the early 1900s for the 1904 St Louis World's Fair, designed to draw visitors to the Indian tea pavilion. It stood about 35 feet high and 20 feet wide, covered in sculptures and detailed carvings representing "the labour of 65 skilled carvers for two years".
After the fair, the structure was sold as scrap and forgotten for nearly 60 years. In 1963 it resurfaced at the Castaways hotel and casino in Las Vegas as the "Gateway to Luck", where gamblers could seek fortune. Howard Hughes purchased Castaways in 1967. By the late 1970s, Jain migrants visiting Las Vegas recognised the structure as sacred. The Jain Centre campaigned to retrieve it, and when Castaways closed in 1987, the casino donated the temple.
In 2008 the Jain Centre of Southern California opened an $18m, 75,000-square-foot complex in Buena Park, California, with the wooden temple as its focal point, its soaring shikhara terminating under a skylight. The temple cannot be used for actual worship due to fire-safety regulations and earthquake concerns, but it reinforces Jain identity in the diaspora and has been a fundraising draw for the faith, including the endowment of a dozen chairs in Jain studies at California universities.
revolutionary, adj.: Repackaged.