Hindu guru wins open-air cremation battle

LONDON - It took four years of complex legal wrangling, nearly bankrupted an ailing Hindu guru and has cost the British taxpayer tens of thousands of pounds. But in the end, it turned out that open-air cremations had been legal all along.

That was the surprise verdict from the Court of Appeal yesterday which has ruled that there is nothing in Britain's cremation laws specifically forbidding someone from cremating themselves in the open air - as long as it is conducted in an enclosed building away from the public's gaze and abides by environmental regulations.

The judgment is a remarkable victory for Davender Kumar Ghai, a 71-year-old Hindu holy man from Newcastle who has fought an expensive battle against the Newcastle City Council and the Ministry of Justice who argued that outdoor cremations were illegal.

As he was carried out of the Royal Courts of Justice by his jubilant supporters, Ghai remarked that the judges' verdict had "breathed new life into an old man's dreams".

Opinion is divided within the British Hindu community over whether open-air cremations are a religious necessity or a luxury.

The vast majority of Britain's Hindu population have had no theological problem with mechanical crematoria, but some ship the bodies of their loved ones back to India for a traditional outdoor cremation.

Orthodox Hindus like Ghai believe that cremation inside a mechanical crematorium would lead to "akal mrtyu" - a bad death that would hamper his soul's chances of reincarnation in the next life.

- INDEPENDENT