Jains are a prosperous community of merchants and professionals in India with the highest degree of literacy of any religious community. One can imagine that business practice in India is not made by or for saints. However, it is one of the minor mysteries of the continent that their monks and nuns live an extreme form of austerity : they eat only once a day, cereals, vegetables and dairies – even eggs are banned from their diet; they do not cook but live off the community’s leftovers; the water they drink has to be boiled and then filtered; members of the Shwetambara sect do not wash ever for...