Mass Suicide

Jauhar

In medieval India, the practice of mass self-immolation, called Jauhar, was a type of suicide behavior largely associated with women and children, and meant to ensure an honorable death in the face of defeat by an invading army. In Jauhar, women would build a large funeral pyre and collectively hurl themselves—and their children—into the flames. Jauhar signaled that there was no other honorable alternative for the women survivors because their fathers, husbands, and sons had been defeated in war, and that seizure by the invading army would probably mean mass humiliation as subjected prisoners, or worse, sexual debasement. Mass suicide by self-immolation was a last act of collective resistance and the only available mechanism of ensuring the honor of the group. The most frequently cited historic example of Jauhar, in the literature on mass suicide in India, is the women of the Fort of Chittor, who committed mass selfimmolation after defeat by an invading army. Led by Queen Padmini, the women of Chittor decided on self-immolation after the failed, yet valiant, effort of their kinsmen to defend their sovereignty against the invading military of the Sultan of Delhi, Allah-ud-din Khilji.

Russian Old Believers

Another historic case of the mass suicide as a politically driven action was the Russian Old Believers in the late 17th and 18th centuries. The schism that led to acts of mass suicide by the Russian Old Believers began with reforms that were implemented by Nikon, the Patriarch of the [Page 697]Russian Orthodox Church under the auspices of Tsar Alexis. These religious reforms were intended to realign the liturgics of Russian Orthodoxy with Greek Orthodox practices. Nikon believed that the Russian Orthodox Church had severely strayed from the strict liturgical customs preserved by their Greek counterparts, and he wanted the Russian Believers to come back to a more traditional ritual. Many Russian Believers felt that Nikon did not have authority to impose this new system of reforms, especially because the Tsar was supporting his actions, and a split ensued between those who supported the change and those who were faithful the “old” Russian liturgy, under the leadership of Archpriest Avvakum. The Russian Old Believers saw the reforms as a signal that the eschatological apocalypse was near. Mass suicide, by collective self-immolation, was the chosen instrument by which many Old Believers sought to protest against the increasingly life-threatening persecution they encountered from the State and from the now-reformed Russian Orthodox church. In fact, thousands of Believers participated in a succession of mass self-immolation between the late 1600s and the early 1700s.

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