Indian Man Plans To Sue Parents Because He ‘Didn’t Consent To Being Born’

“I didn’t ask to be born” is the cliche statement that you might expect to hear from a moody teenager during a full-blown strop with their parents. However, it turns out that there’s a little more to that statement than you’d expect.

In fact, there’s a whole movement, called anti-natalism, that operates on that premise. One person from that movement is Raphael Samuel from Mumbai in India, wants to take his parents to court over their decision to bring him into this world; something he says jars with his ‘anti-natal’ beliefs, which compare having babies to ‘kidnap and slavery’.

Now, I don’t know what you think, but comparing raising a child to kidnap and slavery sounds crazy to me. In fact, this is something that Raphael, 27, acknowledges himself, saying that he has a good relationship with his folks and that his ‘life has been amazing’.

In an interview with The Print, he said: “I love my parents, and we have a great relationship, but they had me for their joy and their pleasure.

“My life has been amazing, but I don’t see why I should put another life through the rigmarole of school and finding a career, especially when they didn’t ask to exist.”

He reckons the anti-natal movement – some of whom collectively refer to themselves as the ‘Voluntary Human Extinction Movement’ (VHEM), while others prefer ‘Stop Making Babies’ – is growing in India and urges people to seriously consider whether they want to bring a child into this world.

India does have an enormous population, with nearly 1.5 billion people living in the country, so perhaps this played into his thinking.

Other members of the movement also spoke to The Print, listing a number of reasons about why people should opt out of getting pregnant, from helping to ease some of the pressure on the world’s resources, to shunning ‘societal norms’. There are a whole host of different motivations behind it, but the end message is the same: don’t have kids.

The group also points out that there are plenty of children who are already alive, waiting to be adopted, which is a fair point.

As you might be able to tell by the fake strap-on beard, Raphael uses elements of humor in his message, and it’s not clear how serious he is about the movement, or to what extent he’s doing these things for attention.

On the Nihilanand Facebook page, run by Raphael, he shares memes with captions such as: ‘A good parent puts the child above its wants and needs but the child itself is a want of the parent’ and ‘Existence requires work and which sane person enjoys working? Stop breeding’.

Meanwhile, a third reads: ‘Isn’t forcing a child into this world and then forcing it to have a career kidnapping and slavery?’ The page also uses the hashtag #parentsarehypocrites.

It’s a strange movement, certainly, but it definitely has some traction. A fellow anti-natalist, 34-year-old Alok Kumar, told The Print: “Everyone is aware of how much we suffer in life. I thought about whether our world was a conducive place for bringing children up, and I decided it would be better not to have a child.”

He now uses his YouTube channel to help spread the message.

The group are set to hold their first ever national meeting on 10 February in Bengaluru, where they will decide (among other things) how best to go forward with their movement.

It is unknown whether Raphael is serious about suing his parents for birthing him, or if it’s just a publicity stunt. If it’s the first, the case will no doubt be thrown out. If it’s the latter, it certainly seems to be working!

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