{"id":14018,"date":"2015-02-02T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-02T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2015\/02\/02\/newcastle-hindu-healer-babaji-davender-ghai-reignites-funeral-pyre-plans\/"},"modified":"2015-02-02T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-02-02T12:00:00","slug":"newcastle-hindu-healer-babaji-davender-ghai-reignites-funeral-pyre-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2015\/02\/02\/newcastle-hindu-healer-babaji-davender-ghai-reignites-funeral-pyre-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"Newcastle Hindu Healer Babaji Davender Ghai Reignites Funeral Pyre Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.chroniclelive.co.uk\/news\/north-east-news\/newcastle-hindu-healer-babaji-davender-8557432\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>UNITED KINGDOM, February 1, 2015 (Chronicle Live): A Hindu healer who fought to legalize open-air cremations is ready to make them commonplace &#8212; five years after winning a landmark court battle. Babaji Davender Ghai spent years battling the system and almost went bankrupt fighting to make funeral pyres legal.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Ghai, president of the Newcastle-based Anglo Asian Friendship Society, said: &#8220;We, as a society, are offering people the chance to stick to their beliefs and have an open-air cremation; a funeral pyre. &#8220;We will do this as a charity, for free. They only need to find the land.&#8221; &#8220;It is a service that Hindus, Sikhs and others deserve to have if they so wish, he said.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Judges said they can be carried out as long as the cremation is conducted in an enclosed building away from the public&#8217;s gaze and abides by environmental regulations. But shortly after the ruling the vision of Mr. Ghai, now 76, hit a set-back as the trials and tribulations of an arduous battle caused him ill health, resulting in a minor stroke. Speaking from his home in Gosforth, he said: &#8220;After we won the fight I got too ill to carry on my work. Now, I have been healed back to full health and am pressing on with what all our hard work earned us the right to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source UNITED KINGDOM, February 1, 2015 (Chronicle Live): A Hindu healer who fought to legalize open-air cremations is ready to,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}