On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 7:19 AM Surabhi Tomar <[email protected]> wrote:
> Does anyone know what legal hurdles can legitimately stop an Opt-out organ > donation program in India? > > An example would be having an Opt-out box on the driver's license or aadhar > card. > > Also, would there be any privacy concerns? > > Surabhi Tomar Dear Surabhi, I don't know what your reasons are for posing the question, but this occured to me. The benefits of organ donation are self evident, so I won't go into that, I don't argue it at all. I am not against organ donation, but I do feel it has to be completely voluntary without even the mildest coercion. It is a profound choice that has to be made with a certain maturity. People are emotional beings, they get attached to things they own, and one's organs are their ultimate ownership. Even the poorest man in India has at least his body to call his own. In any culture, especially in an ancient culture like India there has been a deep awareness of death and its implications. We burn the bodies, and distribute the belongings of the deceased among the poor. Nothing can be spared, even the dead person's bed and old clothes must be given away. We give away everything and burn the body because as long as such things remain it can trigger intense memories in the living, preventing them from moving on. I've seen this in many funerals, including when my father died, there was no hunger, no desire to sleep until he was rendered into the fire; and then as if a switch snapped, normalcy returned, not just in me but in every member of the family, even those not present at the cremation ground. In times before refrigeration there was no question of keeping the body around, after 4 hours it would decompose in the Indian weather, but now with refrigeration people hold onto the dead body for days prolonging their suffering, but that's a topic for another time. Something in the emotional body remains connected to the deceased as long as they remain in some form. When we cremate the body, especially as you see the searing flames there's a lot of emotional catharsis that happens, and this is especially true in India where there's no cosmetic veneer given to death. The son (usually) will take the still warm ashes and bone fragments, crush them with his bare hand, especially the large bones like the hip and femur put them in a pot and dissolve them in the nearest ocean or river. This may sound bizarre but it gives enormous closure. We luckily don't hide death like some other cultures, we want to see death first hand, the totality of it, because life and death are one movement. In this way the emotional bonds are severed instantly, but when we bring parts of the dead body alive in a new being this bond remains. One doesn't have to be a yogi to see all this, Indian cinema's potboilers have made many intense emotional dramas where the organ recipient becomes a love interest, or some other form of intense emotional entanglement starts with the stranger. This is how life works, we attach to whatever we feel a sense of ownership towards even if it doesn't make any sense. Before the copy-cats made a genre of it, whoever wrote the first such plot line will have seen this happen in real life. Humans process life at many levels, the intellect and conscious action is the smallest dimension of life. For most, especially among India's masses this unconscious illogical dimension of their life is the grandest. They don't have any self help books to fall back on, their only protection is a yogic culture that has deeply understood life. In this culture we have never been concerned only with this life, we are not a YOLO culture. We look at life and death as one big cycle, and the ultimate aspiration has always been for mukti. Memories are karma, bonds that hold us back from liberation. Whatever I've written about is only the tiniest fragment of what happens upon death, I've not gone into what is the experience of the dead, even though they are the principal participants in this, and this culture has always been aware of that dimension of life too. It would also be unfair to go into it, since most people don't experience that dimension, so there's no room for rational rejection or acceptance. Here are some press stories nevertheless on what can happen, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-558256/I-given-young-mans-heart---started-craving-beer-Kentucky-Fried-Chicken-My-daughter-said-I-walked-like-man.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-557864/Man-given-heart-suicide-victim-marries-donors-widow-kills-exactly-way.html I only wish that anyone who wishes to impinge on this very deep culture that has understood both life and death deeply do the necessary spade work. It is too easy to only think of the grateful and joyful tears of the ones who have received the organs, and their happy faces. Their testimonies are important, but there's another side to it. Any activist, judge or civil servant who will enact laws on this topic must spend a few days or weeks - day and night in burning ghats watching the bodies burn, they must visit the houses of the dead in different parts of India to see the stages of grief, they must spend time in the emotional lives of people who have lost their loved ones in accidents where the bodies were never found. They must deeply engage with the process of life and death and experience the dimensions of emotional closure I am talking about. This is the intense responsibility with which those who will affect the lives of others must act. This is sincerity. The human experience is very very deep, so it behooves us especially in this age of instant gratification and attention poverty to look far beyond the surface. All this is not to say organ donation is bad. Anyone who along with their family has the maturity to not be emotionally attached to his/her body can safely give away everything. They won't suffer too much. A little suffering is acceptable if another life can be saved, but a lifetime or several of suffering is too heavy a price to pay. Not all memories are bad either. We always preserve the remains of the dead sages in samadhis, properly embalmed in ashes and camphor for this reason, their memories must linger, because they have done something remarkable with their lives. For most people who lead forgettable lives, the sooner they are gone the better it is for everyone, there's less drama and suffering. Finally, India is overwhelmingly largely an illiterate country where only the urban educated can understand the implications of an opt-out. For most in India the "system" will totally determine their life, they are that powerless or clueless. Given India's bureaucratic sluggishness one would be wise to be leery of any extra power being given to the government over life and death. Besides must the human be only limited by the law? Then where is the humanity? The law is a negative list, which prohibits some bad actions at penalty of injury. Humans must also have a positive list, to act in truth, to act in non-violence, to only take what belongs to one, to not be avaricious, to act in compassion, to not act in hypocrisy, to act in sincerity, to act in wisdom etc. Only then does life make sense. So even if the law permits it, which it may not, I don't think that is an active permission to enact.
