Anekantavada, often rendered as the doctrine of non-one-sidedness, rests first on the insight that reality is complex, many-sided, and endowed with infinite aspects and dimensions. No single description, however refined, can exhaust what anything truly is. Every object or event possesses countless characteristics and can be approached from numerous valid angles, so that truth about it is necessarily multifaceted and context-dependent. This vision challenges any claim that one formulation or one doctrine alone could capture the whole of reality.

Flowing from this is the principle of conditional assertion, known as Syadvada. Any statement about reality is held to be true only in a certain respect and from a particular standpoint, and so it is to be framed with “syat” – “maybe” or “from a certain perspective.” Such careful speech avoids absolute, categorical declarations and instead acknowledges the limits of human perception and language. What is affirmed is not that nothing is true, but that every truth-claim is partial, conditioned, and therefore must be modest in scope.

To articulate this conditionality more precisely, Jain thinkers employ the seven-fold predication, or Saptabhangi. Regarding any object or proposition, seven modes of assertion are recognized: maybe it is; maybe it is not; maybe it is and is not; maybe it is indescribable; maybe it is and is indescribable; maybe it is not and is indescribable; maybe it is, is not, and is indescribable. These seven modes do not cancel one another but map the many ways in which reality can be approached, depending on which aspect is being emphasized. What might appear as contradiction is thus reinterpreted as the coexistence of multiple, conditionally valid standpoints.

Underlying these logical refinements is the standpoint theory, Nayavada, which teaches that every act of knowing arises from a particular “naya” or viewpoint. Each standpoint reveals some facet of the real while simultaneously leaving others in shadow, and so each has only partial validity. A more comprehensive understanding emerges not by clinging to a single naya, but by appreciating how many such perspectives can be integrated. This orientation naturally leads to non-absolutism: the rejection of rigid, dogmatic claims that “this alone is the truth,” and the cultivation of intellectual humility and openness to other visions of reality.