UK citizen wants to be cremated in the open air

An ageing Hindu man, living in Great Britain, wants to be cremated in the traditional style used in South Asia - in the open air and using real fire. He's in court for the third time now to challenge the prohibition of this sacred ritual.

Davender Ghai from Gosforth (Newcastle upon Tyne) is 71 years old and in rather poor health, and he's appealing to the courts today, as The Guardian reports, that he and others be allowed to choose for open-air cremation when they die. A lower court has decided that such practice is illegal in the UK, yet Mr. Ghai succeeded to get a hearing at the high court in May 2009, because one of the judges agreed (The Independent) that there was evidence to suggest that

"the burning of dead bodies in the open air is not necessarily unlawful".

According to Hindu tradition, the body of the deceased is burned in the open air on a funeral pyre made of wood, with family members watching the ritual proceedings. In Hinduism, actually an umbrella term for the many religious traditions of the Indian subcontinent, it is believed that the soul needs to be set free after death, and that a complete disentanglement of the soul from the material realm can only be guaranteed if the physical body is consumed by fire and reduced to ashes. However, the high court finally did uphold the local authority ruling, saying that pyres were prohibited by law and that the prohibition was justified. The foreign secretary Jack Straw even involved himself by claiming that the decision was justified on the grounds of public health, public safety, and public morals. These remarks stirred up the Hindu community and drew angry responses, like this one from the Hindu Forum of Britain:

"To suggest a practice which has been carried out for thousands of years and still is by 800 million Hindus in India is somehow 'abhorrent' is insensitive and very unhelpful. No one, including Baba Ghai, has ever suggested doing outdoor cremations in public."

As for public safety and public health, Mr Ghai's supporters cite the Government's own research following the foot-and-mouth crisis. Then, it was said there was no harm to the public from the hundreds of thousands of animals that were burned on open-air pyres. They argue that If the foot-and-mouth pyres did not pose a health risk, then a few hundred Hindus being burned per year can hardly be problematic. While many non-Hindu people probably will find the idea of watching a body burn rather repugnant, such emotional judgment solely depends on what one is used to, on what is customary in a given society. Someone else may just as easily find embalming unnatural, decomposition abhorrent, or being incinerated in a Kafkaesque type of factory with invisible assembly lines. Mr. Ghai, however, has until now been denied to choose his preferred manner of exiting this world, and he hopes that the current hearing in the appeal court will grant him and others the right to this desired from of cremation. If he succeeds, he plans on opening an outdoor cremation centre, for Hindus and non-Hindus alike, where pyres and private screening areas could be built. This would be welcomed by many among the 600,000 Hindus living in the UK, many of whom have to resort to sending the remains of a loved one to India, where open-air creation is the norm. Others, who cannot afford such a costly procedure, have no choice but to proceed with modern style cremation. They often feel badly about it though, because they believe that a covered and electric crematorium fails to allow the soul be set free; thus condemning the deceased to an inauspicious death that may hamper reincarnation and future life. Mr. Ghai, his son and other supporters are hopeful for a positive decision this time, because there have been several instances in the past when open-air cremation has happened in the UK.; for example in 1934 when the Government gave Nepal's ambassador permission to cremate his wife outdoors. Living in Britain since 1958, Davender Ghai is a visible and public figure who has won a Unesco Peace Gold Medal and an Amnesty International lifetime achievement award. However, if there's true equality in the UK, granting him his cremation will have to mean granting it to anyone who desires it.