| This dissertation examines the practice of Sallekhana, also known as Santhara and Samadhimaraa, the ancient Jain religious ritual of fasting to death. In the Jain view, it is observing the supreme vow of non-violence (Ahimsa) by abstaining from food or drink to the point of death. While fasting to death is traditionally held as a form of suicide in the Abrahamic traditions and by extension as a crime by most legal systems influenced by Judeo-Christian thinking, in the Jain philosophical tradition Sallekhana is seen as the ideal death and the ritual has been protected and honored for at least the last three thousand years by the faithful of South Asia and for the last century by the Indian constitution's guaranteed freedom of religion. While little has been written about Sallekhana in English, this work examines the ritual from a historical perspective and then explores the nuances of the practice in relation to the philosophy that underlies the ritual. These findings are followed by a contextualization of the practice in the form of several case studies of individuals who have met their deaths via Sallekhana. The historical perspective and personal stories of Sallekhana are then punctuated by an account of the 2006 Rajasthani High Court Case in which, for the first time in Indian history, the ritual of Sallekhana was challenged as a violation of the Indian constitution's prohibition of suicide; prosecutors furthermore claimed that Sallekhana was a coercive social evil that unfairly targeted women. This legal challenge in India, coupled with several prominent end-of-life legal cases in the United States, has caused members of the Jain diaspora in the United States to fear that their own desires to take the vow of Sallekhana will be challenged and possibly denied. Thus, this dissertation will chronicle the first documented case of Sallekhana in the United States by telling the story of Bhagwati Gada, an Indian-born Jain woman and medical doctor in Lubbock, Texas who died in 2013. Ultimately this work will argue that in light of the Jain philosophical beliefs underlying the act, the moral presumption should be that Sallekhan? is a valid religious ritual and should therefore be legally protected, but only if the ritual is undertaken by an informed person and there is no coercion. |
