{"id":20930,"date":"2016-09-30T10:28:44","date_gmt":"2016-09-30T14:28:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?p=20930"},"modified":"2024-08-09T07:42:15","modified_gmt":"2024-08-09T11:42:15","slug":"davidson-lecture-2016-santhara-challenge-indian-secularism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/2016\/davidson-lecture-2016-santhara-challenge-indian-secularism\/","title":{"rendered":"SANTHARA \u2013 A Challenge to Indian Secularism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n SANTHARA \u2013 A Challenge to Indian Secularism\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

Supported by the College of the Humanities<\/a> and the Edgar and Dorothy Davidson Fund in Religious Studies, attend a screening of SANTHARA, an award-winning documentary by Shekhar Hattangadi<\/a>, a Mumbai, India-based columnist, law professor, and film-maker. Hattangadi\u2019s interest in the interface between secular law and religious ritual has resulted in a thought-provoking look at the sacred Jain end-of-life fasting ritual and its repercussions in Indian society. Lecture\/discussion on October 14th by Prof. Hattangadi to follow the screening.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSANTHARA<\/i>\u201d <\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(A Documentary Film by Shekhar Hattangadi) <\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

SYNOPSIS:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What happens when a traditional religious practice violates the law? This is the central question which the documentary film Santhara <\/i>addresses. It looks at the tensions that arise and the sparks that fly in such a situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Particularly in societies which remain largely faith-based despite their outer trappings of profane modernity, the interface of governance and religion is fraught with tensions caused by friction between religiously mandated rituals and practices and the essential legal and constitutional principles of a secular-democratic polity. In India, the incompatibility between law and religious orthodoxy has manifested in several forms, but most dramatically in the case of \u201creligious suicides\u201d \u2014 typically where a religious or sectarian tradition endorses the self-extinguishment of human life \u2014 as they occur in a legal system that treats suicide as a criminal offence.<\/p>\n\n\n

[wide-image image=”20923″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This documentary film explores the dimensions of the law-religion conflict<\/a> by focusing on the doctrinal-scriptural, ethical, medico-legal and sociological aspects of the controversial Jain practice of Santhara, in which a person gives up food and drink after taking a vow of abstinence, resulting in death by starvation. Based on interviews with, among others, the litigants and their representatives involved in a public-interest litigation in the Rajasthan High Court in 2015 calling for a ban on the practice, the film looks at how religion, law and constitutional secularism over Santhara. The Rajasthan HC judgment<\/a> originally characterized it as a form of \u201csuicide\u201d and effectively criminalized and banned the practice, although the Supreme Court has stayed the ban for now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All the same, the practice of Santhara remains a classic example of the law-religion conflict, and provides an ideal template for debating the question of reconciling individual freedom and personal liberty as well as a minority community\u2019s religious rights on the one hand, and, on the other, the justification for state intervention in matters of religion. The film also depicts the last moments in the life of a Jain sadhvi <\/i>(nun) who adopted this practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"An<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Read more Freedom to Die (PDF)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AWARDS & HONOURS:<\/p>\n\n\n\n