An Introduction to Jainism

Bharat S. Shah is a medical doctor practicing in New York. He has been interested and actively involved in building bridges across cultures, religions, and languages. He has published several books for classroom teaching or for self-study of Asian Indian languages e.g., Gujarati, Sanskrit, English, and the Devanagari script (used for Hindi, Marathi, and Sanskrit languages). He has also published a simple, introductory text on Jainism, an ancient religion emphasizing extreme non-violence, respect for the environment, and social equality. Dr. Shah has been widely published in medical and lay media, and he has given several lectures, interviews, and crash courses on various alphabets. He has authored an autobiographical docu-novel based on his wife's liver transplant. He has been a secreatry and then the president of the Gujarati Literary Academy of North America. He enjoys presenting an extremely complex subject matter in a simple and humorous manner.