Isis

The debate on the Right to Death has been renewed with the filing of a Public Interest Litigation petition by Nikhil Soni against the controversial custom of Santhara, the ancient Jain ritual of voluntary non-violent abnegation of one's physical body by giving up food and water. Mr. Soni sought legal intervention to ban the practice and make it illegal as in the case of suicide.

Under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code, an attempt to commit suicide is punishable with a minimum sentence of a year’s imprisonment. The validity of Section 309 has often been challenged in courts of law. Our Constitution sanctions the Right to Life. Article 21 states a person cannot be denied right to life "except in accordance with procedures defined by law". The question remains as to whether the right to die is inherent in the right to life. Suicide is an unnatural termination of life, and therefore incompatible and inconsistent with the concept of a right to die.

Supporters of the practice are at pains to explain how the concept of Santhara is different from suicide. In contrast to suicide, which is viewed as a violent self-killing, and as emotional and hasty, Santhara is the non-violent self-termination of living "when all purposes of life have been served or the body becomes unable to serve any purpose'', and is a rite that takes place in public and is sanctioned amidst religious sermons. It is not to be adopted in the hope of acquiring either fame, a position in society, divine status or to get rid of physical pains. Also, unlike suicide, Santhara is reversible. A person undergoing Santhara is free to take food and return to normal life at any stage.

The Right to Life includes the right to live with human dignity, and guarantees the existence of such a right up to the end of natural life. This also includes the right to a dignified life up to the point of death, including a dignified procedure of death. Many of those who embrace Santhara are either terminally ill or geriatric, and Santhara is just a refined, courageous and peaceful way of confronting imminent death and of embracing it through resolve and penance, before they are faced either by excruciating pain, loss of faculties, or complete dependence on their relatives.

I know choosing death over life is abhorrent to people in most cultures, but can a custom like Santhara that is essentially a merciful emancipation from what could be a terrible death be clubbed under suicide?

thus spake Pollyanna @ 9:52 pm Footprints: 20