The 70-year-old spiritual healer said that when he does die, he would like his eldest son Sanjay, who lives in Canada, to light the pyre as his family watches what they believe is his soul being released from his body. Davender Ghai, was emigrated from Kenya to England in 1958. He has a number of diseases such as diabetes, asthma, anemia and a degenerative spinal disease but says he fears he will not be allowed to die with "dignity."
Local officials in his home city of Newcastle, in northern England, rejected his request for a license for a pyre site, ruling that cremations outside of crematoria were illegal under the 1902 Cremation Act.Ghai is the founder member of the Anglo-Asian Friendship Society (AAFS). Ghai said some Hindus currently send the bodies of family members to India for cremation but if the ruling goes in his favor, UK cremations on funeral pyres would be much cheaper. "Many people are offended and upset (by the refusal to allow funeral pyres in Britain), because what they'll think is that all other religions got what they wanted, Hindus didn't get what they wanted.
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