Sallekhana is Not Suicide

SR No.: 001568
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T K Tukol
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 1976
Total Pages: 124
Language: English
Classification: Book_English & Religion
File Size: 8 MB

Page 85

74
Suicide
Durkheim refers in her book to suicides in primtive societies where individuals committed suicide through simple vainglory or without provocation. “ Titus Livy, Ceaser, Valirious Maximus, all tell us not without astonishment mixed with admiration, of the calmness with which the Gallic and German barbarians kill themselves. Celts were known to bind themselves to suffer death in consideration of wine or money. Others boasted of retreating neither before fire nor the ocean. Modern travellers have noticed such practices in many other societies. In Polynesia, a single offence often decides a man to commit suicide. ... The readiness of the Japanese to disembowel themselves for the slightest reason is even well-known. A strange sort of duel is even reported there in which the effort is not to attack one another but to excel in dexterity in opening one's stomach. Similar facts are recorded in China, Tibet and the Kingdom of Siam.”8
The latest report of the WHO (World Health Organiation) states that there are a thousand people in the world who commit suicide everyday. The common methods adopted for committing suicide are jumping from heights, jumping into wells or deep water, jumping or lying down before a running train, shooting, hanging, poisoning by use of insecticide or other drugs, burning oneself with the use of kerosene or petrol or use of electrical wires (live ) etc. According to Dr. Vinubhai D. Shah, mental disorders and unhappy love affairs contribute to 36 % of all the causes. Treatises on Psychological Medicine deal with a large number of psychological disorders which, if not treated in time, are most likely to lead the victims to suicide. Mental depression is the result of some distressing circumstance. Depression leads to unhappiness, insomnia, ideas of guilt, slowness of thought, feelings of exhaustion or vague pains and the fear of insanity. Such victims of mental illness need immediate admissions to hospitals as
6. Ibid., p. 222.