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.