A deadly belief is reborn: Beyond life, beyond death

When Shradha Shri decided to starve herself to death hundreds came to watch. Fasting to achieve nirvana is one of Jainism's holiest rites and is making a revival, reports Justin Huggler from Vidisha

Published: 04 August 2005

In an upstairs room of a nondescript building down a narrow, winding lane, a woman died yesterday. For the past seven weeks she had been starving herself to death, and hundreds of visitors came to watch her slowly die. But it wasn't just morbid curiosity. Those who were allowed into the room knelt before the woman in reverence and touched their heads to the floor.

Shradha Shri was performing sallekhana, one of the holiest rites of the Jain religion: fasting to death. Jains, who, like Hindus, believe in reincarnation, believe that sallekhana can free a soul from the endless cycle of rebirth and death.

When The Independent visited Shradha Shri a few days before her death, she looked far older than her 60 years. Her cheeks were sunken, her teeth all missing. She was so weak she could not sit up without help, and lay motionless on a thin cloth spread on the floor while people crowded round her.

It was easy to find her. Everyone in Vidisha, a typical dusty Indian town with cows and goats wandering the streets, knew where the Jain woman was starving herself to death.

Continued at <a href="http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article303493.ece" target="new" >The Independent</a>