Monks practice nudity (sky-clad)

Digambara Jain monks affirm that the highest ascetics should practise nudity, the name Digambara means "sky-clad." Renouncing even clothing as a possession and an attachment, the fully advanced monk goes without garments, taking the vow of non-possession to its literal conclusion and modelling total detachment from the body and the world. The practice is confined to the most senior male ascetics; Digambara lay life and the earlier stages of monastic life are not conducted in nudity.

Digambara tradition traces the eventual split to a period of hardship, traditionally remembered as a severe famine in Magadha lasting roughly twelve years, associated in later legend with the reign of the Mauryan emperor Chandragupta Maurya (who Digambara tradition holds became a Jain ascetic himself), during which many monks migrated south while a group that remained maintained strict nudity; historians treat this account as a later, legendary framing of what was more likely a gradual, centuries-long regional and doctrinal divergence, with clear sectarian self-identification as Digambara and Svetambara not solidly attested in inscriptions until around the fifth century CE. Digambara texts describe the fully unclothed state as the outward sign of complete inner detachment, so that the vow is considered achievable only after long prior training in the lesser stages of renunciation rather than adopted at the outset of monastic life.

Nudity is one of the two great issues that divided Jainism into its Digambara and Svetambara branches around the early centuries CE, the Svetambara ("white-clad") holding that monks and nuns should wear simple white robes. For the Digambara, clothing itself is an attachment incompatible with the highest renunciation, and the possibility of complete nudity is bound up with their further view about who can attain liberation.

The affirmation thus marks a fundamental point of Jain sectarian identity rather than a mere difference of custom. Because full nudity is such a demanding threshold, Digambara monasticism maintains graduated ranks below the fully initiated muni: an kshullak wears three garments and an ailak a single loincloth, each stage marking progress in renunciation before a monk is considered ready for the complete unclothed vow. Digambara munis remain a small population relative to Svetambara monastics, and their public nudity has occasionally caused friction with Indian civil authorities and public order regulations in some jurisdictions, an issue Digambara religious leaders have generally negotiated through appeals to India's constitutional protection of religious freedom, treating the ascetic's nakedness as an inseparable religious observance rather than an act of public indecency.