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After 60 years, the ashes of India's most iconic leader were scattered at sea yesterday. It marked the end of an extraordinary journey, literal and metaphorical. Andrew Buncombe reports
They marched in unison on a bright, clean morning, singing his favourite religious songs and walking behind a flower-decked truck carrying what his family believe is the last of his remains.
Through the streets of India's largest city, more than 300 people who describe themselves as Gandhians followed the truck strewn with roses and marigolds as it made its way towards the ocean. Shortly afterwards, from the side of a bobbing boat, a member of the family of Mohandas Gandhi tipped up the urn and poured the ashes of India's most revered statesman on to the water. They were gone in an instant.
Yesterday's ceremony was heavy with symbolism and significance. Held on the 60th anniversary of the day on which Gandhi was assassinated – shot by an extremist who rejected his lifelong call for peace – the service was itself also designed to salve a wound that has troubled the peace leader's descendants.
"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," said Gandhi's great-granddaughter, Neelam Parikh, a frail 75-year-old who poured the ashes into the water as other relatives held their hands and bowed their heads.
Read...
They marched in unison on a bright, clean morning, singing his favourite religious songs and walking behind a flower-decked truck carrying what his family believe is the last of his remains.
Through the streets of India's largest city, more than 300 people who describe themselves as Gandhians followed the truck strewn with roses and marigolds as it made its way towards the ocean. Shortly afterwards, from the side of a bobbing boat, a member of the family of Mohandas Gandhi tipped up the urn and poured the ashes of India's most revered statesman on to the water. They were gone in an instant.
Yesterday's ceremony was heavy with symbolism and significance. Held on the 60th anniversary of the day on which Gandhi was assassinated – shot by an extremist who rejected his lifelong call for peace – the service was itself also designed to salve a wound that has troubled the peace leader's descendants.
"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," said Gandhi's great-granddaughter, Neelam Parikh, a frail 75-year-old who poured the ashes into the water as other relatives held their hands and bowed their heads.
Read...