Jain leaders, who argue that the practice is constitutionally protected, are mobilizing to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, and they led protest marches across the country on Monday. In the meantime, families are no longer publicizing their relatives’ fasts the way they once did, with advertisements in newspapers and posters guiding pilgrims to their homes.

Babulal Jain Ujjwal, who publishes an annual newsletter on Jain affairs from Mumbai, has counted an average of 450 santharas a year over the last six years, but he said that reports had dropped off sharply this spring, perhaps because families were keeping them secret.

“Santharas are happening, there is no doubt about that, but they are happening quietly,” he said.

One of those was Prekshabai Mahasatiji’s. A nun since the age of 18, she had been asking her guru for permission to fast to death for months, but he had refused, saying that at 52 she was too young. But he changed his mind in June, when after three sessions of chemotherapy her doctors said they could no longer treat her cancer.

She spent 47 days on a hospital bed inside a monastery, with 23 nuns turning her body to alleviate bedsores and craning her neck to feed her water from a tablespoon. During the last stages, her brother said, she could no longer control her bodily functions, and the nuns mopped her body in the bed.

Crowds amassed around her, spreading stories about a divine glow.

“She had a joy on her face that is indescribable,” said her guru, Muni Shri Prakashsundarji Swami. “I would look at her and ask, ‘Would you like to eat?’ and she would smile and say, ‘No.’”

When she died, her body was bound to a plank and propped upright in the posture of prayer, her palms tied together inside a white muslin cloth, and placed in a palanquin, which was carried across town in a swarming parade.

Her brother, Praveen Waghji Gala, said the family had hired a professional photographer to document the progress of her fast, starting the day she left the hospital.