So what if Santhara is even suicide?

As old as human civilisation is the propensity of people to evaluate others, particularly those seen as ‘lowly’ on standards defined by them. A manifestation of such evaluations have been Abramhmic reactions to Indian people, their ‘satanic’ cults and ‘barbaric’ rituals.

This blogger has previously pointed out that even though Islamic rule in India lasted much longer than that of the British, despite of all its atrocities the former could not break the spirit of our people, their belief in the infinite superiority of their culture, religion and their way of life. Even at the very peak of Islamic role in the country, the Muslims remained unclean Mlechha, barbarians without culture, or as the Bhavishya Purana explains, asuras and danavas reborn in human form to wreak havoc on a righteous people.

One would have expected Indic reaction to the European rule to be similar - feared but treated with righteous disdain. Yet, the Hindu not only succumbed to the firang without much ado, he imbibed in its very veins, the notion of the latter’s cultural and moral superiority over him. The reasons are not hard to seek. As depicted in Bankim Chandra’s ‘Anand Math’ and numerous other writings of their time, many Indians saw the British as those who would unshackle them from the last vestiges of Islamic rule (even though the Marathas and Sikhs had reduced Islamic power to rump, even they recognised the nominal suzerainty of the Mughal ruler). The British were seen as our noble cousins, who had been sent by divine provenance to restore our learnings and to support and ‘enable’ us to win back our rightful place in the community of Nations.

Acceptance of the others' capacity to help carries with it an underlying acceptance of the latter’s superiority. Here was a bunch of people seen as physically superior and more importantly, much more advanced materially. Even the more inward looking of Indians grudgingly accepted that on most subjects, European sciences were far more advanced compared to whatever Indians then possessed.  Compared to the British, the Islamic invaders hardly possessed any knowledge which had not reached them from India herself. With hardly any science or skill which the Indians did not possess better, the Muslims were in little position to command cultural superiority. Hence, Islamic denouncement of the horrors of Indic religions remained pinpricks hurled by unworthy lilliputs.

Unfortunately for India, the eighteenth century image of India as the mother of all civilisations, of all sciences or more poetically, all that was good in the human civilisation, was very soon eclipsed by a more virulent imagery - of an India populated with ‘devil worshippers, of a people with little nobility or sense of character. Christian missionaries and those associated with the clergy had a significant impact on moulding this new image of our country. Right from the immensely injurious ‘The History of India’  by James Mill to the minutes on Indian education system by Lord Macaulay, the theme of India being a land of superstitions and devil-worshipping cults got reinforced for ages to come.

While the Hindu could ignore Islamic attacks on his religion as demonic assaults, he could not dismiss the overt and covert Christian attacks the same way. The attackers were materially superior, followed a strict policy of exclusion (making them Brahminical in some sense), had previously been accepted as saviours and came armed with weapons of logic and persuasion. These were not invaders who desecrated temples and forcefully converted a subjugated population. They were those who poured systemic ridicule and scorn over what they declared as cults and superstitious practices.

Is it any wonder that in less than a century, (and to borrow from B. R. Ambedkar) the Hindu was a broken man. The entire Bengal renaissance, even the Arya Samaj and the overall Nationalist movement, was built on a canvas which was undeniably European. The central thrust of all the social movements in the 18^th-19^th century India was to remove ‘non-Hindu/non-Vedic’ baggage from Hinduism and prove that it met all the criteria of a ‘genuine’ religion as defined by the Christians. That the virulence of a Brahmo Samaj and the Arya Samaj against polytheistic Hinduism was no less than that of by Christian Missionaries, is by itself ample testimony to deep-rooted need of the Hindu for a European validation.

Any society stagnates without movement and it is imperative that social reforms be a continuous process. It is again, highly welcome if we continue to learn from other civilisations and adopt that what is good in them. What is, however, self-defeating is the urge to change ourselves just to seek others endorsement. Unfortunately, what was true a century back, continues to hold true even now. Our laws, particularly those directed at the Hindu society, continues to wear colonial blinkers and are determined to ‘reform’ us exclusively from a colonial prism.

If the above seems bombastic, consider the recent ban imposed by Rajasthan High Court on the ancient Jain practice of Santhara on the grounds of it being suicide. This judgement came after a busybody, Nikhil Soni, filed a petition in the Rajasthan High Court, apparently moved by the ‘forced suicide’ of Smt Bimala Devi in 2006. As per Soni, in the final moments, the frail woman ‘appeared’ to make a last-ditch request for food and water. He further claims that her voice was ‘drowned’ out by the bhajans sung around her.

Just how ridiculous can it get? Anyone who knows about Santhara/Sallekhana would know that it is an act which is commenced after permission from the muni, and is a gradual process. In order to prepare the spirit for leaving the bodies, people at times take even years, reducing both quantity, frequency and number of items they consume, before actually discarding food completely. More importantly, there is little stigma attached to those who desire to give up Santhara mid-way and resume food. It is merely seen as symptom that the spirit is not ready to leave the body yet. Even more, the last moments of a person following Santhara are public, at times visited by stream of visitors wising to pay homage to the noble soul and more often, accompanied by munis and sadhvis. While it may be argued that for all the focus of non-violence in Jains, there would be proverbial bad apples who, in their greed for riches, would not hesitate to force their ageing parents to opt for Sallekhana. Yet, it is beyond the pale of logic that a non-related bunch of people, i.e., lay Jains coming for the last darshan and the pious sadhvis and munis would turn a blind eye to the gasp of a dying soul for water or food. Just which Jain or a religious person would want to partake share of a sin as huge as murder, which forced Sallekhna would be?

In its effort to sensationalise, the initial report quoting self proclaimed ‘human rights activist’ that it ‘appeared’ that the lady was requesting for food and water has already morphed into claims of ‘screams’ for food and water. Sadder still is the fact that some unscrupulous Jains have hitched to this human right bandwagon and are acting worse than the know-all ‘activist’ who decided to tell Jains how they need to live!

That apart, the entire fracas over this petition and the subsequent judgement raises at least 3 important points.

First, the judge applied the test of ‘essentialness’, i.e., whether Santhara forms such an essential component of Jainism that its removal will render a non-practitioner a lesser Jain? This is not the first time the Courts have abrogated to themselves the right to judge suitability of rituals. Previously, judgements have banned animal sacrifice, specific rituals seen as demeaning by our rootless liberals and have even restricted worship of certain deities. It is surprising that the judges feel it is right to do so, given that their knowledge does not extend to issues spiritual. Just who would know more about Hinduism and its practices – a Shankaracharya, who is an expert on our scriptures or a judge, who is an expert on the constitution and the IPC?

Even more importantly, just which practice can be defined as essential to any religion? For Hinduism, the foremost duty of a dvija was to perform sandhya and agnihotra. Wonder if even ritualistic Brahmins follow these practices completely these days! Does their non-performance leave us any less Hindus? Or take the case of more codified religions like Islam or even Sikhism. A Khalsa has to carry the 5 Ks. Still, recent decades have seen young Sikhs, even when fiercely asserting their distinctiveness from Hinduism, refusing to carry either Kesh or at times, Kripan. So, can the court now declare that 5 Ks are non-essential to Sikhism. Or that since vast majority of Muslims do not adhere to the principles of zakat (one of the 5 pillars of Islam) or most do not engage in Jihad or that many sub-continental and Central Asian Muslims venerate pirs and their dargahs; are zakat, jihad and veneration of one God and His Prophet non-essential to Islam?

Test of ‘essentialness’ is a misnomer. What is deemed essential or otherwise is merely reflective of the judge’s assessment of the arguments presented in the case. The non-standard nature of this test should itself ensure that it is discarded once and for all. As Shekhar Hattangadi has pointed out, the judge even found the mantras chanted in scriptural support of Santhara by the Jain counsel, ‘amusing’. Just what empathy can be expected from non-practitioners on aspects which they clearly either don’t understand or worse, believe that they (the practitioners) belong to the age of barbarians!

Two, just what is the locus standi of people desperate to reform ‘others’? The last three centuries witnessed many social reform movements in India. Most of them, focusing on issues as varied as widow remarriage to removal of untouchability to banning of Sati, worked at 2 levels. First and foremost, working with influential community leaders and religious figures to denounce the non-scriptural basis of social evils, and secondly, working with Government agencies to suitably modify laws. It was of course not an easy process. But, given the number of stakeholders involved, a certainly more inclusive and democratic means of bringing change. Now, any Tom, Dick and Harry can approach any court on any act which hurts his/her sensibilities. How right is it to give power to one individual to impose his/her version of religion over others, something which seems to be happening with nauseating frequency over the last many years? A few years back, a Parsee lady decided that the current practice of ‘open cremation’ of their dead is demeaning to individuals as in absence of vultures, bodies rot for days. She did not approach the court. She decided to force a dialogue within the community. Should any reform initiative not be similar to it rather than taking a short cut of involving courts when they may not be the best of authorities to rule on religious practices?

Three, just why is the act of giving up one’s life an anathema? Is it because it has some scriptural sanction? Or is it because it is a gift of our sensibilities moulded by centuries of Abrahmic conditioning? Indic religions do not condemn act of giving up one’s life. The first recorded death was of Yama, who did not die but ‘dissociated’ with his body. We have Sati, who decided to immolate herself using her inner fire, then Vedvati, who decided to end her life in the yanga fire so that her rebirth could be hastened. The entire cast of Ramayana, right from Sita who went back to her mother’s womb, to Ram and his siblings (who immersed themselves in Sarayu), sought and embraced death. Amba ended her life and so did Bhishma, who could have continued to live as long as he wanted. These are but a few celebrated cases. Our Dharmshastras prescribe ritual suicide as penance for some sins. Remember Shankaracharya meeting Kumaril Bhatt on his pyre made of paddy husk? Kumaril Bhatt had decided to atone for his sins of lying to his Gurus (pretending to be a Buddhist) by opting for the shastra prescribed death by slow combustion of rice husk! 

Overall, the Hindu scriptures recognise the primacy of atman and its movement from one body to another. If what all is to be achieved in life is achieved or some greater purpose is to be achieved in the subsequent life, just what is wrong in choosing death? Even when suicide is condemned, it is but a paap, the outcome of which is birth in lower or degraded yonis like that of a pishacha or a bramharakshasa. The state had little role in deciding on the morality of giving up one’s life.

Moving on to the modern times, at one level, we speak of a fiercely individualistic persona, we speak of ‘free will’ and find it absolutely acceptable to live life the way we want (subject to some homilies on how it should not adversely impact others), going to the extent of celebrating the ease of killing an unborn child as a woman’s right over her body. Just how can these sentiments be reconciled with the virulent liberal opposition to one’s absolute right over his/her life?

It all comes down to the Christian distaste for suicide. As pointed out in Shiv Vishwanath’s article on Santhara ban, even in the aggressively individualistic society of France, suicide carried a huge stigma. W.E.H. Lecky, in a History of European Morals where he writes of the stigma attached to suicide. He claims that even in 1749, “a suicide named Portier was dragged through the streets of Paris with his face to the ground, hung from the gallows by his feet and then thrown into the sewers.” Right from its origins up to the French Revolution, suicide was a mark of stigma of criminality and pollution.

We Indians, at least the elite sections of it, seems to have deeply imbibed the state’s duty to condemn and punish people for attempting to give up their lives. Worse, while the Abrahmic faiths, for all their moralising, recognise that certain acts of voluntarily giving up life (like a captain willingly going down with his vessel) is not suicide, we, the still colonised act more loyal than the king and decide that not only does an individual not have any right on his body, there are absolutely no nuances when one decides to let go of life.  Here we are talking of a practice which has been adopted by Jain Teerthankars, almost all venerated saints right from Bhadrabahu and Hemchandra Suri, noble practitioners like Chandragupta Maurya and countless lay-Jains, now being declared lowly suicide by a court! A practice which is clearly highlighted in Jainism as the most venerated way of giving up life, practicing the highest precepts of Jainsim, without injury to any living being now being equated with suicide!

For arguments sake, let us assume that the nauseatingly self-righteous Nitin Soni was right about Bimla Devi’s Santhara being a forced one. Does one forced case justify banning of the ritual altogether? There is hardly any law which has not been misused. Some like Dowry Prevention Act and Domestic Violence Act are used more for blackmail and harassment than for the purpose they were designed for. Has any court declared any Act or any section of IPC null and void on account of real or potential misuse? So, what is so different about the practice of Santhara?

Not only does this judgement of the Hon'ble Rajasthan High Court be contested legally, this act of defence should not be left to sundry Jains alone. The Rajasthan HC judgement, like more before it, strikes at the very foundation of religious freedom by the court’s assuming powers on issues clearly spiritual. How secular is the state when it believes that it can decide on issues which has nothing to do with its material authority? Slowly but steadily, our way of life is being chipped away. If change has to happen, let the seed come from us, not from legal shenanigans of those who are not us!

The Liberal Reinforcement of the image of a 'bad' Muslim

Disclaimer – In one of my earlier posts on Facebook, I had commented that death penalty for Yakub Memon should be re-looked at, given that he surrendered and had helped in the investigations. However, subsequent readings of the case, including the posthumous column by B Raman (which was incidentally sought to be leveraged in extracting a commute), made it clear that Memon was arrested in Nepal and once in custody, cooperated like any other criminal in the hands of police. If the ostensible reasons why he should not have been hanged were not correct, there is little one could have validly argued in his favor.

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It is a sign of the dystopian times we live in that hanging of a convicted terrorist was both preceded and is now being followed up by collective breast-beating of our own people.

Broadly, people who protested against the death sentence for Yakub Memon can be divided into two categories – a small minority which is against the concept of capital punishment and the larger majority, which prefers to claim that Yakub was hung because he was a Muslim.

The above distinction is not water-tight as quite a lot among those who are against capital punishment also joined the chorus of ‘a Muslim being hung’. Interestingly, though these people (intrinsically against capital punishment) form a vocal and influential group, there has been no effort from them to get either the Supreme Court or the Government strike down the provisions allowing death penalty in ‘rarest of the rare cases’. It is only when the hanging of a convict draws near that these people dust off their outrage masks and sign petitions and mouth platitudes in television studios.

In any case, the commitment of those claiming to be morally against capital punishment seems shaky when most of them celebrated the award of death penalty to Dara Singh (murderer of missionary Graham Staines and his two children) and registered their disappointment when the higher courts commuted it to life imprisonment. Just how credible are these voices when they resonate with anguish when Babu Bajrangi and Dr Mayaben Kodnani get ‘mere’ life imprisonment rather than the well-deserved noose?

This blogger has previously argued that there is little rational in the arguments forwarded in favour of abolishing the death penalty. Among the many articles penned recently, the one by R Jagannathan is a pretty good defence of capital punishment in India.

Still, while the first group of naysayers have at least some moral arguments against capital punishment, it is the second group, which sees any act only through the prism of identity, which is more dangerous to our society. Such people strike at the very roots of a community as for them, sectarian identities take precedence above all and any person is condemned to be hostage to the identity he was born with. For them, a person's gender, class, religion, education, caste, physical attributes, are all what matters and subsume the most noble or the most ignoble achievements that person could have made.

It was quite unfortunate and at the same time, revealing, that the hanging of Yakub Memon coincided with the demise of a much-loved ex-President of India, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam. Dr Kalam’s passing to the beyond was met with an outpouring of public grief, the scale of which should humble most politicians. Only a few days later, a convicted terrorist was hung to death. His funeral procession was attended by thousands and even in far off Kashmir, the prayer for the departed saw huge crowds and violent protests. The waters were further muddied by many politicians who claimed that Yakub was killed for no fault or that he would not have been killed had he not been a Muslim.

Not to be left behind have been journalists of various hues, who have parroted similar arguments against Memon’s hanging.

All this hullabaloo have made a couple of facts all the more clear – 1. Terrorists have no religion when Muslims commit acts of terrorism. However, if these irreligious/non-religions terrorists do get punished, they become Muslims all of a sudden. 2. Any act committed by a Muslim in the name of religion, howsoever abominable, enjoys a broad degree of support from the ummah. Before I get condemned (I still will be), let it be answered if there has been any voice from the Muslim community or its leadership which says that Yakub was a party to the murder of innocents and was a terrorist?

Finally, and this comes from a gutter piece by Wajahat Qazi, the identity which Muslims in India desire, seems of a ‘Bad Muslim’ - of a community which is regressive, violent and which cares for little but their Islamic identity.

Even at the time when Dr Kalam had been nominated for the post of President of our Republic, quite a few of our fiberals (fake liberals) had commented that he was being rewarded for being a Sanghi Muslim. A few Muslim leaders had gone a step ahead and questioned the very nature of Dr Kalam’s Islam, citing his vegetarianism, his love for Veena and his unconcern with sectarian identities. Some were more cryptic ‘Dr Kalam is not a Muslim leader’. Even in his death, these people did not spare Dr Kalam and insisted on regurgitating their hatred for a noble soul who acted like an Indian all his life.

For any rational being, the hollowness of a claim that ‘Muslims are under siege in India’ would have been defeated by the very sight of an adulating public grieving for an ex-President who was a devout Muslim, the son of an Imam.  Yet, those against the very idea that people need to and can rise over their humble backgrounds, overcome challenges and discard identity based theatrics, find it convenient to dismiss Dr Kalam. Howsoever abominable Wajahat Qazi’s piece maybe, he is only giving voice to those many who believe that ‘Good Muslim’ (one who is assimilated into the cultural, social and politico-economic fabric of India) cannot be representative of Indian Muslims. For him and his ilk, it is only the ‘Bad Muslims, the one with the wild-eyed fanatical look, always alert for the cry ‘Islam in danger’ and active participant in violent and criminal acts, who can be said to be the ‘True Muslims’

Is it really what India and the Muslim community wants?

One can only shudder at the realization that such thoughts are becoming more and more mainstream. How are the Wajahat Qazis’ of world any better than those handful of fanatics who would want all Muslims to be transported to lands outside India? In fact, they are worse for they want Muslims to remain Muslims first and Muslims only, and backwards, and unassimilated into the cultural, social and politico-economic fabric of India. But why? So that they can claim that Muslims are deprived and not allowed to assimilate into cultural, social and politic-economic fabric of India!

If our Nation cannot make itself punish a convicted terrorist, just how do we propose to fight terrorism? The only way left for is just to succumb, lay down our arms, open our gates and invite them to pillage, rape and kill us with impunity.

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Many of our liberals, even when contending that Yakub was hung for being a Muslim, have taken a more nuanced stand and are demanding that justice be done for other cases of terrorism as well. Terrorism, as defined by them, equals riots (in which only the Hindu rioters are to be punished) and Malegaon, Samjhauta and Mecca Masjid blasts, in which involvement of some Hindu groups is being claimed.

Howsoever strongly one may condemn the politics and utterances of Owaisi brothers, one cannot deny the truth in the claim that Sikh terrorists and LTTE terrorists, guilty of equally heinous crimes, were spared the noose because of political support. Of course, the other part of the claim that Yakub was hung because he was happened to be a Muslim bereft of any support, is ridiculous. Still, the very fact of the first part of the statement being factually correct gives a strong reason for an already suspicious people to get swayed by rhetoric of the second claim.

There cannot be any confusion on the fact that punishment for terrorist acts must be swift and at least, in proportion to the crime. The commuting of death sentences of other terrorists only underlines our queasiness, the shameless opportunism of our political classes and our degeneration of our collective sense of nationhood.

Our Nation stands compromised and our war on terror stands compromised when people are effectively pardoned simply because they belong to the ‘right’ community, class or religion.

At the same time, let it be very clear that riots cannot be equated to terrorism. To qualify as terrorism, the act must attack the symbol of power/authority of the state and must aim at overthrow of the present order or at least carving out of a new order. Normally, riots even with all their baggage, fall far short of attempting a systemic change.

In the given case, the liberal argument is around action-reaction. That the Mumbai blasts were a reaction to the Babri Masjid demolition and so justified in some sense. However, the riots which hit Mumbai in December 1992 were a reaction to the demolition. The riots which started again with the burning alive of a Dalit family at Radhabai chawl in Jogeshwari were again a reaction to the demolition. Yet, when the Shiv-Sena led backlash started from January 8, 1993, why is that not seen as a reaction to the preceding days of murder and mayhem?

For argument’s sake, let us imagine a scenario where riots would have followed the blasts (they were a very real possibility then). Would they have been considered a reaction? 

Yes, those involved in riots should be punished. Collectively, let us make sure that the killers of over 300 Hindu victims are brought to justice as well. Let us follow up with the courts asking them to show the same alacrity in pursuing the cases against Muslim rioters the way they have done in the cases involving Muslim victims.

As regards the alleged involvement of Hindu groups in some blasts - even if the allegation is true, they were a 'reaction' to the series of blasts conducted by Islamic terrorists in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Varanasi and numerous other places in India. So the fiberal theory of action-reaction applies here too. Unfortunately, the perpetrators of those blasts have not even been apprehended, leave alone conviction and punishment. So, using the logic of Owaisi brothers, should we say that the Muslim perpetrators were let go because of political support but some innocent Hindus incriminated without basis?

And in case the allegation is not true? In what is increasingly becoming clear as a case of attempted frame-up, there is hardly any evidence against Sadhvi Pragya, Aseemanand, Col Purohit and sundry other accused. In spite of years of efforts, even proper chargesheets have not been filed against them. Some claims like that of Samjhauta express being bombed by them seem even more trumped up as US agencies had identified Islamic terrorists to be behind those blasts.

Much hue and cry had been made on the arrest of ‘innocent Muslim youths’ on terror charges. While it would seem that any Muslim becomes ‘innocent’ by the very fact of his arrest, for the hapless right-wing Hindu, even trumped up charges are Cain’s mark of their crime. One does hope that the courts do not get influenced by the brouhaha over current happenings and consider their bail applications dispassionately.