Wednesday -- January 30, 2008
Mahatma Gandhi's great-granddaughter today spread his ashes in the Arabian Sea in a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the Indian independence leader's assassination.
Honouring the man still revered as the moral conscience of the nation, Gandhi's followers had carried his ashes through the streets of Mumbai to the coast, where the procession was met by a platoon of police and assembled local politicians.
The small copper urn, wreathed in garlands of white flowers, was then taken out to sea on a speedboat, pursued by a flotilla of cameramen and reporters.
Nilamben Parikh then poured the contents into the sea, completing a ritual that finally laid India's secular saint to rest and marked the healing of a generations-old rift among his descendants.
The urn was one of dozens containing Gandhi's cremated remains that were distributed around India after he was shot dead by a Hindu extremist on January 30 1948 at a prayer meeting in New Delhi. The distribution denied Gandhi the traditional Hindu burial he had wanted but placated the mourning masses of newly independent India.
In 1997, Tushar poured what were then believed to be the last ashes of Gandhi into the meeting place of two of Hinduism's holy rivers, the Ganges and Yamuna. He had found his ancestor's remains in a bank vault in India and gone to the courts to secure them for the family.
Many other urns are thought to remain in the hands of devotees, including one that is enshrined in an ashram in California and another installed in the palace of the Aga Khan, the head of the Islamic Ismaeli sect, in southern India.
MORE:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jan/30/india.randeepramesh
