Jain Cultural Festival

In March of 2025, the Jain Studies Program at the University of North Texas hosted a Jain Cultural Festival. This fun afternoon of free vegan food, performances, and activities celebrated Jain traditions and the Jain community in DFW.

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We kicked off the celebration on February 28 at 3 pm with a special pre-event guest lecture by Anil Mundra, the Bhagvan Vimalnath Endowed Chair in Jain Studies and South Asian Religions at UC Santa Barbara.

The cultural festival then took place on Saturday, March 1, in the atrium of the Environmental Education, Science, and Technology Building at UNT. We began with opening remarks from Dean Albert Bimper of UNT's College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. We also welcomed special guest Prem Jain representing the Jain Education and Research Foundation, which founded our endowment in 2017.

Prem Jain and Anil Mundra at our ribbon-cutting ceremony to open the Jain Cultural Fair.

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Thanks to the efforts of organizers from the Jain Society of North Texas, we enjoyed several performances from area Jain youth.

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As part of the festival, we hosted a juried art show featuring work on Jain themes. The winners included:

• Adult Category, First Place: Jiya Shah, "Ranakpur Temple," oil on canvas
• Adult Category, Second Place: Tanya Sanghvi, "14 Dreams Seen by Mahavir's Mother Trishala," acrylic on canvas
• Adult Category, Third Place: Tanvi Jain, "The Divine Radiance of Keval Gyaan: The Abhamandal of Tirthankara"
• Middle/High School Category, First Place: Aadee Ashish Doshi, "Shudhhaattama," paint on canvas
• Middle/High School Category, Second Place: "Saiyati Vishal Tatiya, "Siddhashila," oil pastels on paper
• Middle/High School Category, Third Place: Rijul Gandhi, "Om," collage on board
• Primary/Elementary Category, First Place: Prakriti Navaratan, "Jain Symbol," watercolor on paper
• Primary/Elementary Category, Second Place: Divya Khara Patel, "Jain Flag," paint on canvas
• Primary/Elementary Category, Third Place: Mishita Jain, "Jain Alphabets," collage on posterboard
• Special Category, 3D Models, First Place: Dhriti Baldota, "Four State of Existence," 3D model

Adult Category, First Place: Jiya Shah, "Ranakpur Temple," oil on canvas

Attendees enjoy the art gallery.

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We also hosted an essay contest that featured area Jain youth, ranging from high schoolers to college students. All of the works were of high quality, making the judging quite difficult. To accommodate the range of evaluations, we awarded ties for second and third place as well as several honorable mentions, as listed below. We hope everyone will join us in congratulating these outstanding student participants.

• First Place: Aashita Doshi, "Everything My Eyes Hold Ends: Lessons in Jain Aparigraha"
• Second Place (tie): Yasha Godha, "Jainism and Environmental Ethics," and Ayona Katariya, "Vegetarianism and Veganism in Jainism"
• Third Place (tie): Aanya Nuna, "Jainism, Ahiṃsā, and Nonviolence," and Roma Ajmera, "Anekantavada"
• Honorable Mentions: Atharv Nahar, "Vegetarianism and Veganism in Jainism," and Neervi Jain, "A Minimalist Lifestyle and Aparigraha"

For more images of the winning art and to read the winning essays, please see our special feature on the Jain Cultural Festival in Issue #1 of Samyak: An Undergraduate Journal of Jain Studies.

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In additiona to all these activities, we featured a variety of booths and interactive displays. Students in PHIL 3630 Jainism learned about Jain dietary practices and prepared food to share according to the Jain guidelines. The Arihanta Institute was represented at a booth informing attendees about its online programming. And multiple other local Jain businesses and organizations ran booths at the fair.

Our booths included:

This event was hosted by the UNT Department of Philosophy and Religion and our generous sponsors: