The first written account of a case of misi-muh appeared in anthropologist Tapan Kumar M. All rites of passage in Idu-Mishmi Indigenous community, including the rites associated with the practice of misi-muh, voluntary euthanasia, are performed by Igu shamans. Animist Idu-Mishmis consider certain animals as kins of human and therefore killing them is considered profanity that requires elaborate propitiatory rites. In his teens, David had to perform a funerary ritual mediated by an Igu, as the Idu-Mishmi shamans are called, for inadvertently killing a hoolock gibbon. A picture of Naba Ita Pulu hangs overhead on the wall behind David. He adds, “It was in cases of such disease that people volunteered to die in order to protect the rest of the community.”ĭavid Pulu, 42, a grandson of the late Naba Ita Pulu, a revered Idu-Mishmi leader who helped bring renewed interests in the cultural traditions of the community. on the cultural history of the Idu-Mishmi community from Rajiv Gandhi University, Arunachal Pradesh. This was true “especially epidemic diseases that killed scores of people in a short span of time and lacked cure in the absence of modern medicine,” says Miso, who has obtained a Ph.D. Grounded in an animistic worldview, Idu-Mishmis in the past believed that diseases, like everything else, were caused by spirits-specifically, evil spirits known as khinu hembe. Second, when one caught an epidemic disease with risks of infecting others and threatening the entire community.” Idu-Mishmi historian Rajiv Miso says that misi-muh was socially sanctioned in two situations: “First, when the patient was terminally ill and going through unbearable pain. In contrast to the ferocious debate over the issue and the confusing medical and legal lingo surrounding Western euthanasia, misi-muh enjoyed unanimous social sanction amongst the Idu-Mishmis on entirely practical considerations. Today, a growing number of Western nations are legalizing assisted suicide in cases where terminally ill patients experience pain. Photo by Prakash Bhuyan Misi-muh, a Dying Custom The land of the ldu-Mishmi community has been at the heart of controversial developmental projects that include mega hydroelectric plants for the past two decades and oil palm monoculture more recently bringing rapid changes to their Indigenous lifeworld. Known as misi-muh in the Idu-Mishmi language, the traditional right to end one’s life in certain appropriate circumstances once enjoyed overwhelming social sanction.Īs modern societies, particularly in the West, are increasingly obsessed with prolonging life at all costs and consequently grappling with the pitfalls associated of assisted living, the Idu-Mishmi custom of misi-muh, which was a documented practice as recently as the late 1990s, offers a different perspective on life-and death. The most well-documented of the voluntary euthanasia practices once prevalent in remote Northeast India is practiced among the Idu-Mishmi, an Indigenous community scattered through the Dibang Valley.
“Voluntary and assisted euthanasia was an accepted social practice in many a remote community here-especially when the survival of the entire community was at stake.” “My story tried to capture how the isolated communities in Northeast India tried to cope with extraordinary situations such as an epidemic in the absence of modern healthcare and state,” says Thongchi, 71, who belongs to the Sherdukpen Indigenous community of Arunachal Pradesh and writes in Assamese. As Matung prepares for his voluntary euthanasia, he also reveals that he had to burn his own parents and family during a previous bamboo-masting event to protect the community, as the incineration of infected people and their belongings was believed to arrest the spread of the plague. He then burns himself alive so that the infection does not spread to his granddaughter and her husband and the rest of the community.
Matung, the elderly protagonist of Thongchi’s story, allegedly catches the endur bemar (“rat disease”).
The programs’ volunteers and staff do just that, whether that means giving fans to clients during a heatwave, tarping roofs after a hurricane, or making check-up calls. Local Meals on Wheels programs are known for delivering food to low-income seniors, but during climate disasters, they are in the position to check in on the most vulnerable.
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