UK court rejects bid to allow Hindu-style funeral pyres By Prasun Sonwalkar and H S Rao

London, May 8 (PTI) After years of campaigning and legal
wrangling, a 70-year-old UK-based devout Hindu man Friday lost
a court bid to be cremated on a traditional open-air funeral
pyre, a test case for the community in Britain.

The British High Court rejected the bid of Davender Ghai,
from Gosforth in Newcastle, saying that pyres were prohibited
by law. Justice Cranston said the prohibition was "justified"
but allowed Ghai to approach the Court of Appeal.

If Ghai had won, the case could have opened floodgates
for similar appeals for outdoor cremation to be made legal in
the UK. Ghai was seeking to overturn a decision by Newcastle
City Council in 2006 preventing funeral pyres from being held.

The Council had said the practice is impractical.

During a hearing in March, Ghai, the founder of the
Anglo-Asian Friendship Society (AAFS), told a judge that a
Hindu-style funeral pyre was essential to a "good death" and
the release of his spirit into the afterlife. He said he
wanted to die "with dignity" and not be "bundled in a box".

Justice Cranston said that Justice Secretary Jack Straw,
who had resisted Ghai's legal challenge, argued that people
might be "upset and offended" by pyres and "find it abhorrent
that human remains were being burned in this way".

The judge said that while it was "a difficult and
sensitive issue", the court had to respect the conclusion of
elected representatives. Those in support of pyres would have
to change the "present balance of interests" through the
political process, rather than the courts, he said.

Justice Cranston gave Ghai permission to take his case to
the Court of Appeal and said: "I don't think there is a real
prospect of success, but it seems to me sufficiently a matter
of public importance for me to give permission to appeal."

In a statement to the court, Ghai had said: "I will not
deny my claim is provocative, least of all in a nation as
notoriously squeamish towards death as our own.

"However, I honestly do not believe natural cremation
grounds would offend public decency -- as long as they were
discreet, designated sites far from urban and residential
areas."

In July 2006, Ghai organised a funeral pyre in a remote
field in Northumberland of Rajpal Mehat, 31, an illegal Indian
immigrant. The act was against the law but the Crown
Prosecution Service decided not to bring charges.

Earlier in February that year, Ghai was refused a permit
for an open-air cremation site. Newcastle City Council said
the burning of human remains anywhere outside a crematorium
was prohibited under the 1902 Cremation Act, a ruling the
Ministry of Justice agreed was correct.

The cremation of Mehat, organised by Ghai, was the first
open-air cremation in Britain for 75 years.

Ghai then took his case to the High Court, invoking
Article 9 of the European convention on Human Rights, which
protects religious freedom, and Article 8, which covers the
right to private and family life.

Justice Cranston ruled that Article 8 did not apply
because an open-air pyre would not only affect family and
private life but would also have a "public character".

"The Cremation Act 1902 and its attendant 2008
regulations are clear in their effect: the burning of human
remains, other than in a crematorium, is a criminal offence.
This effectively prohibits open air funeral pyres," he said.

If the father-of three, who moved to Britain from Kenya
in 1958, had won his legal challenge to hold the 4,000-year
old rite of passage, it would have created a precedent for
many devout Hindus. Britain is home to 590,000 Hindus and many
families pay thousands of pounds to fly the bodies of their
loved ones to India for the traditional cremation.

But the judge observed that "typically Hindus in this
country did not share his belief in open air pyres."

Ghai, holder of a UNESCO Peace Gold Medal and an Amnesty
International lifetime achievement award, said "As a Hindu, I
believe my soul should be liberated in consecrated fire,
"Agni", after death -- a sacramental rebirth, like the
mythical phoenix arising from the flames anew.

"I have lived my entire life by the Hindu scriptures and
they have inspired me to charitably serve this country for
over 30 years. In the frailty of my twilight, I now yearn to
die by them," he said in an emotional appeal. PTI HSR
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