Mahatma Gandhi, had a Jain 'spiritual mentor',

 It is little known that the apostle of nonviolence, Mahatma Gandhi, had a Jain 'spiritual mentor', a young diamond merchant, Shrimad Rajchandraji.

Once, in despair, Gandhiji wrote to Shrimad Rajchandraji that he wanted to change his religion. Rajchandraji, a householder-ascetic, asked him to look within himself first. This changed Gandhiji's life.

Thereafter, he would often say that he had learned most of his lessons of self-improvement, truth & nonviolence from Rajchandraji's Jain views.

In fact, Rajchandraji, who died young at the age of 33, is one of the three whom Gandhiji considered as having been instrumental in molding his ideas, the other two being the writings of Leo Tolstoy & Ruskin's poem 'Unto this last'.