{"id":14501,"date":"2015-10-18T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-10-18T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2015\/10\/18\/first-hindu-cemetery-in-hamm-opens-with-flowers-music-and-fire-ceremony\/"},"modified":"2015-10-18T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-10-18T12:00:00","slug":"first-hindu-cemetery-in-hamm-opens-with-flowers-music-and-fire-ceremony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2015\/10\/18\/first-hindu-cemetery-in-hamm-opens-with-flowers-music-and-fire-ceremony\/","title":{"rendered":"First Hindu Cemetery in Hamm Opens with Flowers, Music and Fire Ceremony"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.faz.net\/aktuell\/gesellschaft\/erste-hinduistische-grabstaette-in-hamm-eingeweiht-13834049.html\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>HAMM, GERMANY, October 10, 2015 (Faz): With colorful ceremony Hindus have consecrated their first cemetery in Germany. Priests in orange and red robes blessed the nearly 2,000-square-meter space which borders the municipal cemetery. They threw colorful blossoms, burned incense, played on traditional Indian instruments and rang little bells. <\/p>\n<p>But not all the traditional mourning rituals can be performed in Hamm. In India and Nepal, where in each case a majority of the population are Hindus, the remains will be burned in the open air. The ashes are then scattered in a sacred river such as the Ganges. In Germany, the rituals must be adapted to the law. A cremation here is followed by burial in an urn. [Scattering the ashes of a deceased on a water body is prohibited.] At other places in Europe there are exceptions. For example at Lucerne in Switzerland. There, the ashes may be scattered in a river. A Hindu cemetery is not needed in Norway because funeral urns may be sunk in a fjord. <\/p>\n<p>The priest of the largest Hindu temple in Hamm, Arumugan Paskaran, believes that the new cemetery will be well accepted by his parishioners. Hamm has been a religious center of the Hindus. With 25,000 parishioners it ranks behind the number one in Europe, London, site of Europe&#8217;s largest Hindu temple. There are nearly 100,000 Hindus living in Germany, including those of Indian, Sri Lankan, Balinese, European and Afghan origin.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source HAMM, GERMANY, October 10, 2015 (Faz): With colorful ceremony Hindus have consecrated their first cemetery in Germany. Priests in,&#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-14501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14501","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=14501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}