In 2015, the Rajasthan High Court declared the Jain practice of sallekhanā (the ritual fasting to death, also known as santhara) illegal, classifying it as suicide and explicitly comparing it to satī. Introduced through a Public Interest Litigation, this analogy has significantly shaped subsequent legal, bioethical, and political debates. This paper argues that the comparison between sallekhanā and satī is conceptually misleading, as it obscures fundamental differences in agency, coercion, and structural inequality. The first part of the article examines the doctrinal foundations, ritual prerequisites, and soteriological aims of sallekhanā on the basis of Jain normative texts and secondary scholarship, emphasizing the clear distinction drawn within Jain thought between sallekhanā and suicide, as well as the focus on individual responsibility, consent, and spiritual discipline. The second part turns to satī, situating it historically as a gendered practice embedded in social, familial, and religious hierarchies that constrained women's agency and reproduced asymmetrical relations of power. By placing these two practices in dialogue, the paper shows how religious rituals may function in radically different ways: either as paths grounded in individual spiritual accountability or as mechanisms reinforcing inequalities along gender and social lines. Whereas sallekhanā is conceived as a voluntary, self-directed practice oriented toward one's own liberation from saṃsāra, satī operates within a framework in which religious merit is redistributed beyond the individual body, often at the expense of female autonomy. Therefore, the paper reflects on the risks that arise when culturally distinct religious practices are subsumed under universal legal and moral categories. Such flattening may distort the practices in question and contribute to new legal and social inequalities between religious and cultural groups.