Samadhi: Suicide or sacrifice

Illustration/Devdutt Pattanaik

Savarkar, thought leader of Hindu nationalism, gave up food and water in the final years of life. He saw this rejection of his mortal body as an offering to the soul (atma-arpan) . This was not suicide (atma-hatya). He had argued earlier that this was the path of many Hindu intellectuals and saints.

In Japan, killing oneself by using a sword to tear one's own bowel, following which another person chops the head off is glamorised in many samurai TV shows. It is called sepekku and harakiri.

Warriors plunge themselves into battle and even let the enemy kill them. This was called admired as matyrdom, not suicide. Suicide was sin in many cultures and so the only way they could justify encouraging soldiers to rush to their death in battle was by renaming it glamorously. There is no Sanskrit word for martyr. So Savarkar replaced the Muslim word "shaheed" (technically meaning one who witnesses the truth that is Islam) with a word that he invented, "hutat-atma". Nowadays, soldiers prefer the word "vira-gati", or passage of the brave.

Hutatma was also not athma-hatya, even though one marched to one's own death voluntarily. It was another form of atma-arpan, sacrificing the flesh for a noble higher cause like spirituality, religion, patriotism, or clan pride. We can argue this is just lawyer-speak, not fact.

Be that as it may, across Karnataka we find many stone slabs celebrating the spot where Jain monks and Jain kings starved to death, determined to clear their karmic debts, and find liberation. This practice was called sallekhana. As per Jain lore, 2,300 years ago, both Chandragupta and Chanakya performed sallekhana in the final days of their life.

In the Ramayana, Ram walks into a river never to rise again. In Mahabharata, Pandavas walk up mountains, and fall to their death. Their mother, uncle and aunt, allow a forest fire to engulf them. These acts were not seen as ritual suicide, or accidents. They were seen as voluntarily giving up the flesh. In the case of yogis, it was said to be using yogic powers to let the breath leave the body voluntarily forever. In Upanishadic lore, scholars who were defeated in debates were expected to either accept the winner as master or voluntarily give up their breath or drown themselves in rivers, or jump into fire. This is found in many Vedantic and Buddhist texts of mediaeval times describing the ‘triumph' of spiritual masters who clearly relished this form of ‘spiritual' violence.

In the 8th century, Kumaril Bhat, the Vedic Mimansika, chose to burn himself to death as he had doubted the Vedas. Buddhists argue it was because he had been shamed by his Buddhist teachers. His contemporary Shankaracharya did yoga in a Himalayan cave and his students covered the cave with a boulder, as per legend. Dyaneshwara, the Bhakti saint, did the same in the 13th century in Maharashtra. Scholars call it ritual suicide. Since he was barely 21 years old at the time, many argue he was psychologically traumatised by Brahmin rivals, and this was the only way to find peace.

Many 19th century Hindus did not know how to explain this practice to their colonial masters. Even today, suicide is considered sin in Christianity and Islam. It is easier to condemn those who kill themselves in depression than those who kill themselves for politics and religion.

The author writes and lectures on the relevance of mythology in modern times. Reach him at devdutt.pattanaik@mid-day.com