Mystery surrounds Harrison's last rites in India

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Mystery surrounds Harrison's last rites in India

Reuters

Varanasi, December 4

 

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Mystery surrounded the last rites of Beatles' guitarist George

Harrison on Tuesday after a Hare Krishna official said he had been

wrong to say the musician's ashes were to be immersed in the holy

Ganges river in India.

"Apparently, I had been misinformed by someone in Delhi," Arajit Das

told reporters. No further details were immediately available.

 

Officials in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh said on Monday that

the ritual may already have taken place quietly and that authorities

had not been informed.

 

Harrison, 58, who died last week in Los Angeles after battling

cancer, was a long-time devotee of the Hare Krishna movement, a Hindu

sect.

 

He was cremated in a cardboard coffin hours after his death, in

keeping with his Eastern faith. The ritual of immersing the ashes is

symbolic of the soul's journey towards eternal consciousness.

 

Das had told Reuters the musician's widow, Olivia, and son, Dhani,

were to immerse Harrison's ashes in the Ganges at dawn on Tuesday in

the bustling northern town of Varanasi, one of the holiest Hindu

places and a popular site for cremations.

 

"NO SUCH PROGRAMME"

 

Das had said the family would then make the 130 km (80 miles) journey

to the town of Allahabad to immerse his ashes in the Sangam, a holy

confluence where the Ganges meets the Yamuna river.

 

Hare Krishna's representative in Allahabad was as much in the dark as

most others on the immersion of the ashes.

 

"As fas as we are concerned, there is no such programme so far,"

Suvikrya Das told Reuters.

 

Hare Krishna officials in Varanasi said they were puzzled by the

sequence of events.

 

"Our office in Delhi informed us the ashes would be arriving by a

special aircraft this morning. We were waiting to perform the

necessary rituals. But now nobody has come," Prasann Atma Das, head

of the Hare Krishna sect in Varanasi, told Reuters.

 

Photographers and reporters thronged the tourist town of Varanasi on

Monday, hoping to catch a glimpse of what had been planned as a

private ceremony.

 

Varanasi has at least 80 "ghats" -- platforms or steps by the river

to help the devout take dips aimed at cleansing sins, make sacred

offerings or cremate bodies and immerse the ashes.

 

Relatives normally sprinkle ashes on the river's surface before

lowering the urn gently into the water.

 

Harrison, who believed in reincarnation, was a member of the

International Society for Krishna Consciousness, popularly known as

the Hare Krishna movement.

 

He spent his last moments chanting "Hare Krishna" with his family

next to him and pictures of the Hindu gods Rama and Krishna near his

bed, British newspapers said.