Ajmer (Rajasthan): Another person from Rajasthan died on Monday after observing Santhara (spiritual fast).
Seventy-four-year-old Amarchand Kaswan of Lakhan Kotari, Ajmer, was suffering from pneumonia and blood infection and had developed gangrene after an operation.
He was on the fourth day of his fast unto death on Monday.
The debate over Santhara, the Jain custom of fasting to death for salvation, is likely to intensify in Rajasthan.
Sixty-one-year-old Vimla Devi, who suffered from brain tumour, died in Jaipur on September 28 after a 14-day fast.
Nonagenarian Keila Devi, a resident of the city’s Johari Bazaar, has been fasting for 25 days. She suffers from liver cancer and brain tumour.
Over 200 Jains take up Santhara every year, says Indologist Jainism scholar, Jitendra Shah.
Shah, who has traced the origin of Santhara back to 250 BC, says the custom is based on Jains’ belief of voluntary, peaceful death.
"Santhara is a philosophical concept of attaining samadhi," says Shah, who is also the director of L D Institute of Indology.
"On an average, about 240 Jains (both Shewtambar and Digambar sects) attain Santhara every year though most of them go unnoticed and unrecorded," Shah says.
In Jainism, Santhara means spiritual withdrawal from worldly existence in tune with divinity and according to scriptures, a person cannot perform Santhara without the permission of their Guru.
"A person deciding to attain Santhara first prays, meditates and practices fasting every day. Then the person gradually give up solid food, confines oneself to a bed and finally relinquishes even liquid-diets," he says.
"According to a PhD thesis done by one of my students, in 2004 there were 260 recorded Santhara deaths among Shewtambar Jains and 90 deaths among Digambar Jains between 1993-2003," says Shah.
A case against the ritual of Santhara is pending a hearing in the Rajasthan High Court on October 5.
A Public Interest Litigation was filed in the High Court after Vimla Devi undertook the spiritual fast and subsequently died on September 28.
(With inputs from PTI)
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