India commemorated the 60th anniversary of Mohandas Gandhi's assassination yesterday with his great granddaughter scattering the peace icon's ashes in the sea off the country's most bustling metropolis.
Gandhi, who led the nonviolent struggle for independence from Britain, is still revered as the moral conscience of the nation and pictures of his wizened, smiling face are everywhere in India, from the country's rupee notes to murals along the highway.
To honor the nonviolence leader, Gandhi's followers carried his ashes through the streets of Mumbai to the coast of the Arabian sea. Some 300 people, including school and college students and elderly followers, watched as Gandhi's family members took the ashes nearly 1.5km into the sea on a decorated motorboat.
PHOTO: AP
There his great granddaughter Neelam Parikh, a frail 75-year-old immersed the ashes into the sea.
"It's an emotional day for us and also a day for deep thought. A day that we should remember him and remind ourselves of his teachings," she said later.
Gandhi's ashes were preserved by an Indian businessman who sent them to a museum in Mumbai last year. The museum had planned to display the ashes, but Gandhi's family said he would have preferred them scattered at sea.
A prayer ceremony also was planned at the New Delhi meeting house where he was killed by a Hindu extremist in 1948, just months after the nation was born. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, the head of India's ruling Congress party, are expected to attend. Sonia Gandhi is the widow of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister and Mohandas Gandhi's close friend.
The family of Gandhi's eldest son, Harilal Gandhi, who was estranged from his father, will scatter the ashes as a gesture of reconciliation. Harilal Gandhi had a troubled history with his father and did not attend his funeral, breaking with Hindu tradition under which the eldest son should light the father's funeral pyre.
Harilal's family will have the opportunity to do something they have never done before, said Usha Gokani, a granddaughter of Gandhi.
"It's the correct thing to do, since Gandhi's three younger sons' families have participated in earlier funeral rituals," she said.
Hindus cremate their dead and the ashes are supposed to be scattered in rivers or the sea after 13 days. But after he was killed, Gandhi's ashes were sent to villages and towns across India for memorial services by his followers. It's not known how many urns containing his ashes still exist.
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