A Terrible Act of Reason: When Did Self-Immolation Become the Paramount Form of Protest?

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http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/05/history-of-self-immolation.html



Suddenly, self-immolation is everywhere. Yesterday, in Oslo, a man set himself on fire outside the Anders Breivik trial. He follows at least forty Tibetans who have set themselves aflame to protest Chinese rule in the past year. There have also been a series of self-immolations in the Middle East and North Africa. In January, five young Moroccan men auto-cremated (the more accurate term; “self-immolation” technically means any form of self-destruction) following a fifty-two-year-old pensioner in Jordan and an elderly woman in Bahrain. The young men belonged to a group called Unemployed Graduates that had been occupying the Ministry of Higher Education building. They followed upon the action of Mohammed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor, whose self-immolation—inspired by the chronic poverty and corruption of his country—helped incite the Arab Spring.

But not all the recent self-immolations are in support of revolution or protest movements. Kamran Khan, a thirteen-year-old honor student in Islamabad, Pakistan, burned himself to death in March, apparently out of embarrassment at not being able to afford a new school uniform. Then there are the forestry students at university in Bhubaneswa, India, who reportedly are threatening to self-immolate if the state forestry department doesn’t reform its recruiting policies.
What happened to sit-ins and hunger strikes? When did dousing oneself in flammables and lighting a match become the preëminent act of defiance?

Some time ago, actually. Contrary to common belief, the practice does not originate in the Vietnam era and is not confined to Asia (where, thanks to Hinduism, Buddhism, and other religions, posthumous cremation is far more common than in the West). Rather, it is a millennia-old practice in both the West and the East, where it has long commanded mass sympathy and outrage unmatched by other forms of suicide. The sociologist Emile Durkheim separated suicides into four types: the egoistic, the altruistic, the anomic (moral confusion), and the fatalistic. Perhaps self-immolation captivates so thoroughly because it wins on all counts. It is the ultimate act of both despair and defiance, a symbol at once of resignation and heroic self-sacrifice.


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