Sallekhana

The practice

Sallekhana is a gradual withdrawal from food and drink, undertaken by a mendicant or layperson facing terminal illness, extreme age, or circumstances in which the vows can no longer be kept. It is not undertaken privately: the tradition requires the permission of a teacher, a settled state of mind free from passion, and the formal renunciation of attachments, including the desire to live and the desire to die.

The reasoning is that death is certain in any case, and that a death met with full awareness and without craving prevents the influx of karma that a frightened or resisting death would cause. The texts treat it as the proper close of a life lived under the vows, and Jain literature records it of Bhadrabahu and, in tradition, of Chandragupta Maurya.

Distinguishing it from suicide

Jain writers have argued the distinction at length. Suicide, in their account, is an act of passion — despair, anger, or the wish to escape — and increases bondage. Sallekhana is undertaken only when death is already imminent, requires the absence of those passions, is reversible, and is supervised. The tradition also distinguishes it from any form of assisted killing: nothing is administered, and the person may take food again.

Critics have questioned whether these conditions are reliably met, particularly for elderly women under family or social pressure, and this has been the substance of the modern dispute rather than the doctrine itself.

The legal case

In 2015 the Rajasthan High Court held that sallekhana amounted to suicide under the Indian Penal Code and directed that it be prosecuted. Jain communities across India protested on a large scale, arguing that the ruling misread both the practice and the constitutional protection of religious freedom. Within weeks the Supreme Court stayed the order, and the practice continues. The underlying question has not been finally settled.