by Kalyani Kurup

Created on: July 14, 2008

IS SUICIDE RIGHT?

A friend of mine once asked me: Which is the crime, the successful completion of which frees you from punishment, but the failure to commit the crime makes you punishable?' I couldn't, for the life of me, get the correct answer and gave up after giving ridiculous answers like, robbery, burglary, perjury etc.

The correct answer, I was told, is suicide. If you failed to kill yourself, nobody is likely to be considerate about the agonies that drove you to take such a fatal step. Instead, they would confound you by imposing a fine or by incarcerating you.

Is suicide such a crime?

I think it was in James Clavell's book Shogun' that I first read about the ritual Japanese suicide known as Sepukku or Harakiri. I did feel frightened because I am a timid individual who don't even dare look at an open wound. But maybe because of my timidity, the ritual looked like an act of enormous courage to me. Since I myself did not have the courage to do it, I felt respect for someone who had the mental and physical strength to accomplish such an act.

A Japanese Samurai's bushido or warrior's way of life', involves in it a contempt of death.' Death is not something from which one should run back frightened, but it is something to be embraced bravely, when situation necessitates it. That is how I view the taking of one's own life.

Another story of suicide that I came across was that of Rani Padmini (Queen Padmini). A neighboring sovereign, bewitched by her beauty, attacked her kingdom in order to capture the queen and make her his own. The invading king was better equipped in manpower and weaponry and Rani Padmini's husband and his small band of brave men had no chance of winning the battle. They did fight to the last man and every one of them gave up their lives in a scenario identical to the one described in Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire' and the movie The 300 Spartans.'

That left the pretty wives of the noble warriors, headed by the Queen, at the mercy of the marauders, to be raped, or made concubines, or incarcerated.

Once the womenfolk got information that the situation at the war front has become hopeless, they lit a huge fire and jumped into it, immolating themselves. They chose death since the alternative was rape, subjugation, imprisonment or death at the hands of the enemy. I can never bring myself to condemn that choice of death just because it was suicide. Under the circumstances, it was the noblest thing to do.

In much of the East, death has always been considered

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