ARADHANA - a Tantric type of killing?
One wonders how they could do it. The Jains, most peaceful of people whose
monks and nuns cover their face to avoid annihilating micro-organisms and extol
ahimsa; how could they allow a
thirteen year old teenager to starve herself to death?
“There was never any compulsion,'' said her father Laxmichand; “we would take permission everyday from our
Guruji in Chennai, one day at a time,"
he said. The high priests of the religion advised the family that they should
keep the grieving rituals to a minimum and observe the cremation as a 'shobha yatra. Can they be considered complicit in this grievous crime, an
act of deliberate himsa, a dialectical
opposite of the ahimsa they swear by?
Read the contradictions and discontents of Santhara in my story.
