Santhara: The Right to Die

The age-old Jain practice of Santhara has been held illegal by a court, raising old questions anew. Does the state own every life under it, or does our right to life also include the right to stop living?

- Lhendup G Bhutia

Marte hain aarzoo mein marne ki, Maut aati hai par nahin aati (One dies longing for death but death, despite being around, is elusive) —Mirza Ghalib, as quoted by Justice Markandey Katju, Aruna Shanbaug vs Union of India, 2011

On the homepage of Dhanraj Sangoi’s cellphone is a picture of his mother soon after she turned 86. It is a close-up of her face. Her hair, parted at the centre, has been pulled back tightly to form a bun. Her ageing skin hangs at her cheeks, but her jawline is sharp and pronounced. A fall about four years earlier had severely limited her movement, but you see no perceptible frailty in this picture. Strong and healthy, she stares straight into the camera with a grim expression. But if you observe closely, you can notice the edges of her mouth curling, perhaps into a smile.

“Now see this,” Dhanraj Sangoi, 62, says somewhat excitedly as though about to reveal something astonishing. He dips into a folder of images in his cellphone and hands the device over to me. These are photographs of his mother’s body on the day of her funeral. It is only a few months after the earlier picture was taken, but her body has undergone a remarkable transformation. She is now severely gaunt, almost skeletal. Propped upright on a brightly decorated palanquin, her hands folded atop one another, she has been made to sit as though in a meditative posture. A white shroud has been wound around her body and a white surgical mask around her mouth.

In the pictures, relatives take turns to carry the palanquin, an unusually cheerful crowd following it. This was how the diminished figure of Vadji Sangoi was carried, seated in a palanquin, from their home in Mumbai’s Ghatkopar suburb through a busy road to a crematorium.