Gandhi honoured as ashes are scattered off Durban

Six decades after his death, some of Mahatma Gandhi's ashes have been scattered off the coast of South Africa, where he was confronted by racial discrimination and developed some of his philosophies of peaceful resistance.

An early-morning service in a harbour in the eastern city of Durban, on the 62nd anniversary of Gandhi's death, included the laying of flowers and candles on the water's surface.

Gandhi was shot and killed by a Hindu hardliner in 1948 in New Delhi. His ashes were divided, stored in steel urns and sent across India and beyond for memorial services.

It was not unusual for some of the ashes to have been preserved instead of scattered as intended.

South Africa's state broadcaster, SABC, reported the portion of Gandhi's ashes in South Africa was brought to the country by a family friend.

It quoted Gandhi's great-grandson, Kidar Ramgobin, as saying yesterday's ceremony included the playing of the national anthems of South Africa and India.

Gandhi first came to South Africa to work as a lawyer in the Indian community.

Soon after arriving in 1893, he was ejected from a train for refusing to leave the "whites only" compartment. As a result, he joined the fight for human rights in South Africa.

Gandhi lived in homes and farms across South Africa for two decades before returning to India at age 46 to push for independence from Britain.

Many South Africans are descended from indentured workers brought from India in the 19th century to work on sugar plantations in the Durban area.

In 2007, some of Gandhi's ashes were sent to a Gandhi museum in Mumbai by an Indian businessman whose father, a friend of Gandhi, had saved them.

Those ashes were scattered in the sea off Mumbai in 2008.

In 1997, ashes that had been stored in a bank vault in northern India were immersed at the holy spot where India's Ganges and Yamuna Rivers meet.

- AP