Keeping aside disagreement about customs like ‘Santhara’, one can at least agree that only an adult can make a decision to opt for death voluntarily in times of sickness.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)

French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic writer

Namrata (name changed), the three-year-old daughter of IT professionals from Indore, is dead.

She had brain tumour which was successfully operated upon in January in Mumbai but it relapsed in March, and within less than a week, she breathed her last.

Apropos nothing seems amiss in her story.

The child got the best treatment available, and for her parents, belonging to Jain community, money was never a problem.

Despite all these relevant details, it is rather difficult to forget or disremember the past few hours of her life when she was still alive, when she must have been in tremendous pain and the way she was made to undergo some ritual to ‘improve her next birth’ — as impressed upon her parents by their spiritual leader.

We learnt that instead of hospital bed, where she should have been given palliative care, the child was shifted to the ashram of one Maharaj, a Jain monk, who had convinced his gullible disciples – her parents – to opt for Santhara “to decrease her suffering and improve her next birth”.

And these young IT professionals, barely in their 30s, had no qualms in shifting their dying daughter to the ashram, despite knowing full well that she was in tremendous pain and any sudden change would exacerbate her death. [ Read the full article here : https://www.newsclick.in/why-3-year-old-childs-death-will-haunt-us-long-time]