The Daily Undertaker has a post today about the British government considering a proposal to allow open-air funeral pyres in response to requests from the large Hindu community in the U.K. The Times article dates back to April of 2007, but the issue has been brought back to the forefront of the news in the U.K. as a lawsuit filed by a Hindu spiritual healer against the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne will come before a High Court judge next month.
Ritual open-air cremations have been a part of Hindu death rites for 4000 years, and there are presently a million active Hindu and Sikh religious adherents in the U.K. Conventional enclosed cremations are not only completely legal in Britain (as in the U.S.), but more Britons are now cremated after death than are buried (here in the U.S., it is somewhere around 25%). While some argue that there are safety and environmental concerns associated with open-air pyres, for the most part the debate has focused more on the cultural integration of the Indian population in the U.K. However, Patrick (the Daily Undertaker blogger) cites this 2003 CBS News article that details how authorities in India itself are beginning to have concerns about the environmental impact. Of course, in India there are many more funeral pyres than there would be in the U.K., but the practice is beginning to be viewed as archaic in Indian society as well as among the British Indian population.
Patrick wonders, as do I, how many people in the United States would latch on to open-air cremation as yet another way to personalize one’s final ritual. Surely there would be Star Wars fans requesting to be dressed up like Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker as well as plenty of requests for Viking boat pyres. Long ago I decided that I want to have my remains cremated, but I have to admit the appeal of being set adrift in a flaming Viking warship while my mourners cry “OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODDDDIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNN!!!” certainly has some dramatic appeal.
Dear Harvey, Pete, Barry, Kevin, and every other weathermonkey on Boston-area TV: Enough is enough. The fucking blizzard was THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. It’s time to stop trotting out the same blurry videotape of cars stuck on Rt. 128 that is older than some of the people who are actually on your broadcast, just so we [...]
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT. Since you cannot click [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and neatly into [...]
