He authored over 80 books on a variety of subjects, including Jain philosophy, Prakrit literature, and Hindi textbooks for children.

Jagdish Chandra Jain[1] was born in 1909 in a village called Basera situated in the Doab region of western Uttar Pradesh, about 12 miles from Muzaffarnagar.

[4] In 1911, when Jagdish Chandra was two-and-a-half years old, disaster struck when his father died, a victim of the plague, leaving his mother as sole care-taker of the two boys.

[citation needed] After a few stormy years, his elder brother, Gulshanrai, who lost one of his eyes due to smallpox, began to look after the family.

[citation needed] Though born in a prosperous family of Tissa in Uttar Pradesh, she willingly gave up her luxurious life-style and moulded her own aspirations to support her husband.

After a few years, Jagdish Chandra received a scholarship to work as a research scholar in Shantiniketan (abode of peace) in West Bengal, which was the ashram of Rabindranath Tagore.

[citation needed] He felt that British rule in India was the root cause of all evil, and naturally created in him an urge to change society.

Settling into an academic career was never easy for young Jagdish Chandra; his manifold skills and intensity of social commitment never stopped pulling him in different directions.

He proceeded to prepare a set of Hindi text books that were later prescribed by the education department of the government of Maharashtra for secondary schools.

[1] India was passing through a critical period—there was unrest and repression all over the country; World War II had begun; Mahatma Gandhi was leading the rigorous Quit India Movement; and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose had escaped from his house detention and reached Berlin from where he was broadcasting for his countrymen.

As a result, Jagdish Chandra rejoined the freedom movement and soon after was arrested and detained in the Worli Detention camp in September 1942.

However, the government did not take up the matter seriously and Morarji Desai, who was then the Home Minister of Bombay, rudely shouted saying, “In that case, you are the conspirator and I will arrest you.”[6] On 20 January 1948 Madanlal blasted a bomb during the prayer meeting of Mahatma Gandhi at the Birla House, Delhi.

Subsequently, Jain appeared in the Gandhi murder trial at the Red Fort in Delhi as the chief prosecution witness on behalf of the government of India.

He exposed the callousness[1] of the government in this regard in two of his books: I Could Not Save Bapu[6] and The Forgotten Mahatma[7] In July 1993, Jain died from cardiac arrest in Bombay (Mumbai).