Samadhi: Suicide or sacrifice

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 atmaarpan This was not suicide atmahatya He had argued earlier that this was the path of many Hindu intellectuals and saintsIn Japan killing oneself by using a sword to tear onersquos own bowel following which another person chops the head off is glamorised in many samurai TV shows It is called sepekku and harakiriWarriors 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 ldquoshaheedrdquo technically meaning one who witnesses the truth that is Islam with a word that he invented ldquohutatatmardquo Nowadays soldiers prefer the word ldquoviragatirdquo or passage of the braveHutatma was also not athmahatya even though one marched to onersquos own death voluntarily It was another form of atmaarpan sacrificing the flesh for a noble higher cause like spirituality religion patriotism or clan pride We can argue this is just lawyerspeak not factBe 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 2300 years ago both Chandragupta and Chanakya performed sallekhana in the final days of their lifeIn 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 lsquotriumphrsquo of spiritual masters who clearly relished this form of lsquospiritualrsquo violenceIn 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 peaceMany 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 religionThe author writes and lectures on the relevance of mythology in modern times Reach him at devduttpattanaikmiddaycom