A life worth leaving

Fasting to death as telos of a Jain religious life

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2159392
AutoresJames Laidlaw (0000-0002-1035-4799, University of Cambridge, autor de correspondencia)
Año2005
Volumen34
Número2
Páginas178-199
Fecha de publicación2005-05-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaEconomy and Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0308-5147 • E-ISSN: 1469-5766
EditorialTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/03085140500054545
OpenAlexW2063934591
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas29
Referencias citadas31

This paper describes the practice of fasting to death in the Indian religion of Jainism. It shows how and why this form of self-killing is a highly regarded and publicly celebrated positive aspiration in Jainism. Through comparisons with some other forms of self-killing found in South Asia, it highlights the moral complexities of issues around volition and agency. And it illustrates how the practice embodies positions on some universal ethical issues. Keywords: suicidereligionJainismIndiaethicsagency Acknowledgments I am grateful to the editors of this volume and to two anonymous readers for helpful comments on an earlier draft. The paper was presented to the 2003 conference on 'scenographies of suicide' at Birkbeck College, and also to anthropological theory seminars at the University of Cambridge, at the Queen's University Belfast and at the University of Malta. I am grateful for comments and questions from participants at those seminars. Notes James Laidlaw teaches social anthropology at the University of Cambridge, where he is also a Fellow of King's College. He is the author of The Archetypal Actions of Ritual (1994, with Caroline Humphrey) and Riches and Renunciation (1995), and the editor of The Essential Edmund Leach (2 vols, 2000, with Stephen Hugh-Jones) and Ritual and Memory (2004, with Harvey Whitehouse). For excellent general studies of Jainism, see Dundas (Citation2002) and Jaini (Citation1979). The principal ethnographies on Svetambar Jainism drawn upon here are Reynell (Citation1985), Carrithers and Humphrey (Citation1991), Banks (1986), Folkert (Citation1993), Humphrey and Laidlaw (Citation1994), Laidlaw (Citation1995), Babb (Citation1996), Cort (Citation2001), Kelting (Citation2001) and Vallely (Citation2002). On the Digambars, see Carrithers (Citation1989, Citation1996, Citation2000). See for instance the Acaranga Sutra (Jacobi Citation1884: 74-8), the Antakrddasah (Barnett 1907: 63-77), and the Upasakadasah (Hoerle Citation1888-90). Recent accounts of the Jain practice, drawn upon here, include Bilimoria (Citation1992), Caillat (Citation1977), Chapple (Citation1993: 99-109), Dundas (Citation2002: 179-81), Jaini (Citation1979: 227-40), Settar (Citation1989, Citation1990), Williams (Citation1963: 166-72) and Young (Citation1989). The material presented in this paper concerns the Svetambars, but the practice is equally central to Digambar Jainism. Indeed, some of the most celebrated acts of samadhi-maran in recent decades have been by prominent naked Digambar monks. See Carrithers (Citation1989). I am grateful to Jacob Copeman for drawing this report to my attention. For example, in 1990 the Union government led by Mr V. P. Singh announced, to general surprise, that it would immediately implement the recommendations of a long-ignored report of a commission of inquiry into caste inequality. These recommendations involved radically increasing the proportion of university and college places and government jobs reserved for persons identified as members of disadvantaged or 'backward castes'. There were widespread protests by Hindus of 'higher' castes, especially by young, urban males, mostly from relatively poor families, who believed that their already meagre chance of achieving a respectable white-collar job would be significantly damaged by these proposals. And some of these protests took a horrifying form, one that combined themes from some of the forms of suicide I have just mentioned: the dharna protest and the death by fire we find in both sati and jauhar. Young men doused themselves in petrol and set themselves alight. Several died from protests of this kind. We should remember that, in addition to the influence of Rajcandra before the latter fasted to death, Gandhi's mother was a Jain, and he grew up in a trading-caste Hindu milieu in which inter-marriage with Jains is common and the general cultural influence of Jainism very marked. On the controversies around the practice of sati, in the early nineteenth and the late twentieth centuries, see Mani (Citation1987), Hawley (Citation1994a, Citation1994b), Sunder Rajan (Citation1990), van den Bosch (Citation1990) and Harlan (Citation2001). The arguments of the time were collected and summarized in three highbrow publications, Economic and Political Weekly (7 November 1987), Manushi (1987) and Seminar (February 1988). See also the Economic and Political Weekly (27 April 1991) and Oldenberg (Citation1994). Concern that legal action might be taken did prompt a Jain judge to write a treatise explaining why in his view the Jain practice, not being 'suicide', is not covered by the law (Tukol Citation1976). During the controversy over the Roop Kanwar case, some Hindu activists did raise the matter, in an attempt to show that the law was being applied selectively against sati, but, although this point was to some extent sharpened by the fact that one of the leading feminist campaigners in Jaipur was a secular Digambar Jain, it did not get taken up in a sustained way. This might be in part because political support for 'Hindu' parties and organizations is in fact very strong among Jains in Rajasthan. Additional informationNotes on contributorsJames Laidlaw James Laidlaw teaches social anthropology at the University of Cambridge, where he is also a Fellow of King's College. He is the author of The Archetypal Actions of Ritual (1994, with Caroline Humphrey) and Riches and Renunciation (1995), and the editor of The Essential Edmund Leach (2 vols, 2000, with Stephen Hugh-Jones) and Ritual and Memory (2004, with Harvey Whitehouse

Renunciation · Sociology · Theology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Philosophy · Violence, Religion, and Philosophy