Exploring the role of death and dying in shaping the identity of Hindu elderly people: a medico-religious approach

ABSTRACT

This article specifically focuses on the dialectic of identity of elderly people in the context of religious, cultural, and medical epistemology of death and dying. By discussing traditional religious ideologies and contemporary medical practices appertain to death and dying, this article provides fresh insights into the discursive practices that shape elderly people’s sense of identity. This hermeneutic study explores the culture of medicalized death and spiritually oriented death in the philosophical framework of Hindu doxography which entails the process of shaping and making sense of identity of dying Hindu Elderly.

KEYWORDS:

• Death and dying
• identity
• medical
• religion
• elderly people

Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges the guidance of the supervisor Dr Vivek Singh. Also, the author is pleased to get support for books from Sayaji Rao Gaekwad Central Library, B.H.U.

Disclosure statement

The author declares that there is no COI regarding this manuscript

Notes

1. One of the three hospice-like spiritual establishments of Kashi where dying elderly people come to die composedly.

Additional information

Funding

There is no financial support for this manuscript.