Ahlul Bayt News Agency (ABNA.ir), India’s teeming cities, where even the living jostles for space, are running out of room for the dead.
India’s Hindus cremate their loved ones, but the country’s Muslim and Christian minorities usually choose burial--and they fear the practice is under threat.
About 185 million Indians belong to the two faiths, with census figures recording 13 percent of the population as Muslim and 2 percent as Christian.
Finding land for burials in urban areas is the primary problem, religious leaders say, as India’s cities become ever more congested and every piece of earth is fiercely fought over.
“Go anywhere in India and see the graveyards, they are all full,” said Imam Umer Ahmed Ilyasi, chairman of the All-India Imam Organization, in New Delhi. “The government has been overlooking this issue for decades.”
Ilyasi said the lack of burial space is not just a problem in major cities such as New Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata but has also spread to many small towns.
Muslims bury the dead as fast as possible, and disapprove of cremation as they believe there will be a physical resurrection on the Day of Judgment.
To meet their needs, increasing numbers of Muslims are joining together to buy small pieces of wasteland to convert into graveyards.
Mohammed Arif, a resident of Noida on the outskirts of Delhi, purchased a government-registered plot along with his siblings and cousin in 2008.
“When my nephew died in a car crash, we struggled to get space in a graveyard in Delhi to bury him,” said Arif. “We want to avoid such a crisis in future.”
Indian Muslims often face widespread discrimination and live in the most densely packed, poorest parts of inner cities.
A 2008 government report on ‘wakf’, an Arabic word for property endowed permanently by Muslims for the benefit of their community, showed that 50 percent of all wakf plots across India have been encroached on.
“Government offices, hotels and schools have all been constructed and many slums are standing on wakf property,” said Rehman Khan, a lawmaker who sits on the parliamentary wakf committee.
“Don’t award us new land but at least give us back the land we own and we will make our own graveyards,” he said.
India’s relatively small Christian community--like many of their faith around the world--are increasingly choosing cremation over burial for reasons of both space and cost.
But Father Rebello, chairman of the Delhi Cemetery Committee, said many Indian Christians were hesitant to abandon the tradition of burial.
“Several families are turning one grave into a family grave to accommodate all the members -- at least four more can be buried in the same place,” he said.
“We are suggesting families should start cremating the bodies and recently a priest in Delhi was cremated to promote it but we cannot force anyone.”
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