(This piece was written more than two weeks ago. There have
been some developments recently. Also, I hope to find more time soon to reflect
further on the last bit - the choice of death under coercion, duress, emotional
arm twisting and mental instability).
Right
to kill, but not to die
At the risk of reductionism, I am
tempted to engage with an irony – we are now simultaneously a state that awards
death to an individual who is very keen on living, and forces life upon an
individual keen on dying. We are one of the few civilised states
still practicing death penalty (which might change very soon after the
Indian Law Commission recently concluded that
"The death penalty does not serve the penological goal of deterrence any
more than life imprisonment"), and one of the many still shirking the
right to die.
We have been negotiating
with decriminalisation of attempt to suicide since 2013. In Feb 2015,
Ministry of Home Affairs decided to accept the recommendation of
the Law Commission of India to delete Section 309 from the IPC, and drafted a
proposal. I wonder if it's de facto non-punishable while we wait. We now remain,
at least on paper, one of the last few countries in the world, where if you
don’t die successfully, you’ll go to jail for attempting. My partner Kani tells
me that can make for a good film.
Whose
life is it anyway?
The fundamental function of the state
is to guarantee sustenance, equality and complete civil liberty, while
balancing it with checks to ensure one individual’s liberty does not violate
another’s rights. It is to negotiate social contracts, warn against violation,
and compensate for a breach. The state builds infrastructure and systems to
fulfill its fundamental promises, and protects property, owned individually,
commonly or collectively.
So how do we resolve a conflict between
the state’s guarantee of the citizen’s well being and a citizen’s demand for
self-annihilation? By establishing a simple inviolable boundary – the landscape
of the individual. The individual (an informed, soundminded consenting adult)
is the sole owner of the self, entirely responsible for the self, and not state
property. The state’s duty is limited to protecting the citizen from external
threats and vice versa. The state, in its traditional paternity, shall not
forget, that it has limited powers and responsibilities in an individual’s
choices affecting their own selves.
“My
reckless child”
The state must educate, inform and
caution the citizen, but must not mistake pedagogy for paternity.
Case in example, smoking. The state
directs cigarette companies to warn consumers, without ambiguity, against the
risks smoking poses to their health. The state is even free to carry out
educational campaigns enlightening citizens of such risks. Warned against
eventual, potential fatality, the individual is still free to smoke. Not
everywhere though – the state has to now step in to prevent the individual’s
action from harming others, and may do so, by banning smoking in public spaces,
even creating smoking booths, where smokers are welcome to injure and pleasure
themselves and their compatriots.
Now, when the law fines a citizen for
not wearing a seatbelt or a helmet, the only ethical explanation for such
punishment is that it’s a deterrent created to lessen the burden of medical
infrastructure on the exchequer, caused by the incidence of accident related
fatality. (There have been arguments about smokers having to register
themselves, which will limit their healthcare rights in the eventuality of
developing lung cancer, but such recommendation is bound to conflict with other
fundamental rights of the citizen).
Religion,
morality, law
I am an atheist and I am assertively
irreligious – to the extent that I am convinced that most religious and ancient
philosophical systems of the world are well intended, but under-updated and
stagnant, often vestigial and flawed, at times inspired, yet misinformed. I am
not an advocate of freedom of religious expression, if it violates the
fundamental rights of another individual (including those of non-human
persons.)
In furtive didacticism, the character
of Maitreya in my film Ship of Theseus often mouths my personal beliefs. One
such is, “All ethics should be arrived at, in isolation of religious beliefs.”
It was important for me that a monk would say this. I wanted to make sure that
the central philosophical debate about identity, self and violence doesn’t get
embroiled in religious politics, social practice and contemporary law. So, I
hypothesized the situation within the framework of a fictitious religion, the
basic principles of which were, inspired by the two Śramaṇa traditions – Jaina
and Buddha. Similarly, I suggest we step away from religion for a moment, to
examine the discourse around Sallekhana.
In times when we have decoded the human
genome, plunged deep into the brain, deconstructed every emotion and instinct
to its original evolutionary function, we have little need to fall back on
ancient institutions for finding moral solutions – we can do that completely
using contemporary tools of enlightenment and inquiry. (We might however, in
some cases, want to dust over usable parts of intuitions and ideas from ancient
wisdom.) In building a case for the right to die, I recommend that we do not
let the defense get overpowered by a singular conversation around religious
freedom. There is something bigger at stake here.
Bodily integrity and individual
sovereignty are inalienable rights of the modern citizen. These rights are even more fundamental than the right
to religious expression, and it is primarily these rights that are being
challenged by the ban on Sallekhana. We
have to accept and establish that the law has no moral right, whatsoever, to
legally interfere with lifestyle, sexual, reproductive and death choices of
informed, consenting adults, even if they are beyond fathoming of the
presumably well-intended representatives of the state.
The right to religious expression
follows soon after, and can be rephrased as the right to define and manifest
the self, as an extension of the worldview guiding an individual’s life. How
the individual sees the self – as a sum total of all the past causes, as an
evolving bio-chemical cumulative with an accumulated meaning and free will, as
a wave in an ocean, as a meaningful creation of a hyper intelligent entity, as
a meaningless accident, as a notion, as a machine hosting a ghost, as a step
towards ascension, as transient, as permanent or as an atom carrying the
universe – will have to be allowed, however unacceptable it may seem to the
rest of us. The individual has the right to construct their own meaning of
life, and interpret their life and death in the light of that meaning. This
worldview can be negotiated with, argued with, transformed, informed – but
cannot be legally regulated. Not for a while, at least.
Rules
of infringement – lines in sand
However, it will be puerile to brush
the nuance of the dilemma under the carpet. While there is greater unanimity
over a terminally ill patient’s right to die, the debate is really within the
space of a physically healthy individual’s choice to terminate their life, as
it raises questions of mental well being and informed consent.
Is it a stable choice, achieved after
due deliberation, and profound consideration of the consequences, or is it an
impulsive decision, an avoidable one, a decision made out of mental instability
or a falsely perceived absence of choices? Can we establish coercion or
emotional arm twisting, conclusively? (Coercion, or just a gently aggressive
egging on from the family could be enough for a dependent elderly member of the
family to want to die. The possibility of coercion and mental instability form
the crux of the argument calling for a legal ban on death practices like
Sallekhana and euthanasia). Is it the concerned individual making the choice,
or is it a guardian or a caretaker ? These questions will need more inquiry and
deliberation.
Meanwhile, as far as informed, sound
minded, consenting adults are concerned, it’s high time the state stops
criminalising their sexual choices, their aesthetic choices, their media
consumption, their personal expression, how they live and how they die.
