Kishanji, a 71-year-old Kutchi businessman, lay listlessly on the floor of his apartment in suburban Mumbai for over a month. The Navkar Mantra streamed out of a record player and a giant poster of Mahavira, the 24th and last Jain Tirthankar, kept watch. Kishanji barely registered the presence of visitors. After 35 days, he stopped breathing. His relatives then turned up-in their finest bandhanis-and sang hymns rejoicing his departure.

Kishanji had embraced santhara, or sallekhana, a voluntary fasting to death sanctioned by Jain scriptures. According to Babulal Jain Ujjwal, editor, All India Jain Chaturmas Suchi, over 1,000 Jains have gone on the fast since 2009. "Every day, all through the year, a Jain somewhere in the country takes this holy vow," he said.

Jain texts say santhara is the ultimate route to attaining moksha (freedom from the cycle of birth and death) and is resorted to when one feels that life has served its purpose. For Kishanji, the motivation came from unbearable suffering caused by a cancerous kidney tumour. "We would hear him groan late into the night. He was in too much pain," said his daughter, who is 45.

The legal debate surrounding santhara has made the Jain community wary of publicizing it. While information on santhara processions were a permanent fixture in mainstream Gujarati and Hindi papers till a few years ago, police crackdown and instances of force-feeding those who take the vow have made the practice a low-key affair.

The practice got embroiled in controversy in 2006 when the case of Keila Devi Hirawat, who was 93, sparked debate on whether santhara had a place in the modern world. While its opponents equate it with suicide, arguing that it is a fundamental breach of Article 21 of the Constitution-which guarantees the right to life but not death-supporters say the right to not live is implicit in the right to life.

Santhara is not the reserve of monks or those suffering from incurable diseases, says Jitendra Shah, director, LD Institute of Indology, Ahmedabad; the vow can be taken by anybody willing to give up attachments, including one's body. But usually, Jains use the tenet to put an end to their suffering. Like Manjuben, who was 65 when she took the vow last year after developing hernia of the food pipe. "It was hard to fight the tears," said her daughter Beena, who lives with her family in Kandivli. "But I was also happy that she had moved on to a higher plane."