NEW YORK, USA, January 31, 2008: An religious group in Los Angeles that has had an urn of Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes for over 50 years and has set up a much-venerated memorial is hesitant to part with it — for now.
Tushar Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi’s great grandson, had asked the Self Realization Fellowship (SRF) to immerse the ashes in water.
“In Hinduism, ashes from the funeral pyre must be immersed in water. It is sacrilege to keep them,” Tushar’s father Arun Gandhi told IANS in New York.
“This is the first time we are hearing about the matter. There is no way we can respond in an immediate way on something we have had in our possession all along,” SRF spokeswoman Lauren Landress told IANS on telephone from California.
The ashes are kept in an ancient Chinese stone sarcophagus, at the Mahatma Gandhi World Peace Memorial, which is part of the Lake Shrine seaside ashram established by Yogananda in 1950.
Gandhi’s ashes from the last surviving urn in India were immersed on Wednesday at Mumbai’s Chowpatty beach on the 60th anniversary of his martyrdom. The urn was handed over to Mani Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya two months ago by the son of ex-Governor of Gujarat, Sriman Narayan, who had it since 1948.