The Ambiguity of the Vow: Law, Kinship, and Gender in Pathologizing the Jain Fast Until Death
Miki Chase, Visiting Assistant Professor of South Asian Religions
In contemporary urban India, Jain laywomen comprise the majority of those who undertake sallekhanā or santhāra, the Jain fast until death. This project examines the everyday relational and ethical labor through which the fast is enacted within the domestic sphere, tracing how doctrinal ideals of asceticism are translated into embodied practice and how women’s ascetic agency is rendered both morally precarious and intelligible within kinship configurations and the evolving Indian legal and political landscape.
Lunch provided.
Contact: Tracy Wall twall@hds.harvard.edu.
Thursday, April 23, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM.
Braun Room.