Hunger strike

Hunger strikes can be classified on various grounds.

By type

• An ordinary hunger strike is refusal to take any food.
• Dry hunger strike - refusal to accept not only food but also water.
• Partial hunger strike:
  • Refusal of all types of food, except some. For example, a hunger strike "on bread and water," in which a person does not eat anything but a small amount of bread and does not drink anything but water.
  • Refusal of certain foods. For example, the refusal of prisoners to eat “official food”, although they do not refuse food brought by their relatives.

For reasons

• Political
• Social
• Economic
• Personal

By the number of participants

• Customized
• Massive

Shastras recommend a short-term hunger strike (abkhojan) or a hunger strike to death (praia) as a means of lender pressure on the debtor. In the commentary on the translation of “Dharmashastra Narada” A.A. Vigasin and A.M. The impostors point out that the customs are when "the lender himself can starve or stop feeding his servants and children ... well attested by various Indian sources." The hunger strike was carried out at the debtor's house. In the event of the death of the creditor, the debtor was considered his killer.

The first evidence of the widespread use of hunger strikes as a way of social struggle in the history of India is contained in the Kashmir chronicles of the XII century. "Rajatarangini." It reports on the collective fasting of the Brahmins . The largest of these shares occurred in the XII century. in the capital’s temple of Gokul, when members of parishads (temple advisers) from all over Kashmir gathered to participate in it. This hunger strike was directed against King Bhikkhu and aimed at the restoration of his rival Sussala on the throne. At the end of the X century. the brahmanas, the owners of the main agrahara (land holdings), instigated by the rival Queen Empress Didda, began a hunger strike and achieved popular unrest. After the death of Didda (beginning of the 11th century), the brahmin ministers urged the brahmana members of the parishads to go on a hunger strike to protest against the chief minister of Tunga, a favorite of the queen who came from a low caste. The chronicle mentions two cases when at different times (XI and XII centuries) the tsarist troops sought hunger strikes for a repeated increase in salaries.

The same chronicle describes individual hunger strikes. So, over the past years, one plaintiff could not prove that his body of water was unfairly assigned by another person, therefore, seeking a review of the case, he went on a hunger strike and demanded that the king personally examine it. The king, indeed, personally addressed this matter and, with the help of advisers, decided it in favor of the plaintiff.

The duty of the king laid on him personal responsibility for all cases of violation of law in his lands. Therefore, the death of a brahmana, for example, was a particularly grave sin not only on that person, because of which a hunger strike had begun, but also on the ruler of the country. In this regard, Tsar Uchchala even “made an oath to commit suicide if at least one person dies of a hunger strike”, which prompted the judges to be careful.

At the beginning of the XX century. political hunger strikes in India were widely and systematically used in the national liberation struggle of the Indians against British rule . They are primarily associated with the name of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi . Gandhi considered hunger strikes as one of the methods of Satyagraha movement and said that "only he has the privilege of a hunger strike in the name of truth, who is free from animal passions and who renounced all earthly possessions and aspirations" ^[1]

The record for the duration of the hunger strike was set by the Indian human rights activist Sharmila Irom . She refused food and water for more than 500 weeks since November 2000, protesting against the "Law on Special Powers of the Armed Forces." She has been detained for more than 10 years and force-fed through a pipe in her nose on the basis of Indian law, according to which attempting suicide is a crime.

Forced feeding was widely used in prisons during prisoner hunger strikes, but the Tokyo World Health Organization's 1975 declaration prohibited the forced feeding of prisoners under certain conditions. According to this declaration, if a prisoner refuses to eat, feeding can be stopped, but only if at least two independent doctors confirm that the prisoner can reasonably and calmly consider the consequences of his refusal to eat, which the doctors must explain to him ^[2] .

European Court of Human Rights in 2005 in the judgment of Nevmerzhitsky v. Ukraine (54825/00) indicated that measures such as forced feeding cannot be considered degrading if they are necessary to save a person’s life. However, the Ukrainian government did not demonstrate that force-feeding was caused by medical necessity in the case of Nemezhitsky. The court also indicated that forced feeding methods using handcuffs, a mouth expander and a special rubber tube inserted into the esophagus can be equated to torture ^[3] .

From 1974 to 1984, the Russian physicist and public figure A. D. Sakharov held a hunger strike several times. With these actions, he had the goal of drawing the attention of the world community to the fate of Soviet political prisoners, and also expressed his protest about the restrictions on the exit of citizens from the USSR during the years of Soviet power. On May 2, 1984, he began a hunger strike, which lasted until August 6 of that year, protesting against the refusal of the Soviet authorities to allow Sakharov’s wife Elena Bonner to go abroad for heart surgery. On the fifth day of the hunger strike, May 7, Sakharov was seized ^{[ who? ]} on the street and taken to the Gorky Regional Clinical Hospital, where he was forcibly held for four months and engaged in forced feeding ^[4] .

• Protest
• Hunger
• Thirst
• Strike

• T.P. Selivanova. Hunger strikes as a etiquette form // Etiquette among the peoples of South Asia: Sat. Art. - SPb .: Petersburg Oriental Studies, 1999, p. 215-228.