Jain Sect's Death Ritual Clashes With Indian Government's Laws About Suicide

PUNE, India — All week, people streamed in and out of the handsome bungalow where the Lodha family lives, eager to witness for themselves the amazing event that was occurring there.

On a bed in a corner of a large sitting room, surrounded by a crowd of reverent visitors, the family’s 92-year-old patriarch, Manikchand Lodha, was fasting to death. It was the culmination of an act of santhara, a voluntary, systematic starvation ritual undertaken every year by several hundred members of the austere, ancient Jain religion.