Answer

In Jainism, every soul is independent and experiences the result of its own karma. So, strictly speaking, one person cannot remove another soul’s karma by performing rituals.

However, family members may still perform remembrance, prayers, charity, and religious activities after someone’s death for two main reasons:

• To cultivate their own compassion, detachment, and spiritual awareness.
• To remember the departed person respectfully and inspire themselves toward Dharma.

In Jain Dharma, such practices should not be understood as “feeding” or “saving” the departed soul in the way some other traditions may believe. The departed soul has already moved according to its own karma.

Explanation

Jain philosophy teaches:

• Each jiva is separate.
• Each soul binds its own karma.
• Each soul experiences the fruit of its own karma.
• No other person can transfer karma, remove karma, or change the soul’s next birth by ritual alone.

Therefore, if an anushthan, puja, samayik, pratikraman, charity, or tapasya is done after a person’s death, its direct spiritual effect is mainly on the person performing it.

It may create punya for the doer if done with right intention, humility, and devotion. It may also become a cause for inner purification.

Why Family Members Do It

In Jain culture, remembrance after death is generally connected with:

• Bhavna: reflecting on the impermanence of life.
• Vairagya: developing detachment from worldly relations.
• Dharma aradhana: doing religious activity instead of excessive grief.
• Respect: remembering the virtues of the departed person.
• Self-purification: using the occasion to increase one’s own spiritual discipline.

So the purpose is not to control the departed soul’s journey, but to make the living family members spiritually awake.

According to Jain Understanding

A Jain should avoid the belief that:

• the departed soul depends on our food offerings,
• our rituals can directly change its karma,
• we can “send” merit to it in a literal karmic-transfer sense,
• the soul remains waiting for family rituals.

These ideas are not in harmony with the Jain principle that every soul is responsible for its own karma.

But doing religious remembrance with right understanding is acceptable as a cultural and devotional practice.

Spiritual Understanding

When someone dies, Jain Dharma encourages us to think:

• This body is temporary.
• Relationships are worldly and changing.
• The soul travels alone with its own karma.
• I too must practice Dharma before death comes.

This is why prayers, swadhyay, samayik, charity, and tapasya after a death can be meaningful—not because they “control” the departed soul, but because they awaken the living soul.

Takeaway

According to Jainism, the departed soul goes according to its own karma. Family members do not have the power to change that soul’s karma through rituals. But they may perform anushthan, prayers, charity, or remembrance with the right Jain understanding: for respect, detachment, compassion, and their own spiritual purification.