LONDON (RNS) Thanks to a devout grandfather who wants his body consumed in “sacred flames,” Hindus and Sikhs have won the right to be cremated on traditional open-air funeral pyres in Britain.
In a landmark decision on Wednesday (Feb. 10), the British Court of Appeal granted 71-year-old Hindu Davender Kumar Ghai victory in his four-year battle to be allowed a “natural cremation” in line with the customs of his religion.
Britain’s estimated 558,000 Hindus and 336,000 Sikhs will now be permitted for the first time to cremate their dead legally on open funeral pyres.
Ghai himself, now in poor health, said he looks forward to expecting his final wish to be fulfilled — for his eldest son to set fire to his corpse on a pyre to allow the release of his soul in accordance with the Hindu belief in reincarnation.
Authorities earlier had turned down his plea on grounds that “natural cremation” would violate a 108-year British law that limits cremations to an enclosed building hemmed in by walls and a roof.
Ghai argued in court that British-style crematoria amount to a “mechanized humiliation of dignity — a waste-disposal process devoid of spiritual significance.”
The Ministry of Justice was defensive, arguing that “a large proportion of the population (in Britain) would be upset and offended and would find it abhorrent if human remains were burned on open-air pyres.”
But the three-judge Court of Appeal rule that legal requirements would be met — and Ghai’s human rights protected — if such “natural cremation” were to take place in a walled structure with a hole in the roof, or perhaps no roof at all.
The case, the court said, was not a matter of human rights but of what constitutes a building.
Hindus were satisfied, and Ghai himself said the ruling “has breathed new life into an old man’s dreams. Now I can die in peace.”