David is mixing the evil medieval practice of burning wife on the dead husband' s pyre with open cremation of a dead person (man or woman's) body. This is not a sensible argument.
Just by allowing open area cremations ,civilization will not cease to exist. Is English civilization so weak?

Raj P, Chicago, usa

I am a Hindu but I am against the concept of open air cremations as they are highly polluting. I strongly support the concept of electric cremations as oppossed to such open air cremations. I beleive there is a point when we have to realize and accept that not everything written by our forefathers is necessarily correct.

Abhay Doshi, Mumbai , India

Any learned Hindu will be able to tell that our ancestors wrote our scriptures that after death the body should disintegrate to Mother Nature. How the body should disintegration is not in the scriptures. So an argument by a minority group of Hindus may not prevail. In my line of work as a Hindu Funeral Director in London and comments by the modern generation of British Hindus prefer the morden way of cremation in the UK and of course if any Hindu wishes have an open pyre cremation I will pack them of to the Ganges for a cremation. Zoroastrians (not Jains) who used to bury in wells no longer practice feeding their dead to the Vultures but have resorted to cremation just as the 72% of the UK population.

Chandu Tailor, London, England

Should we also then accommodate the Jain practice of laying the corpses on a high building and allowing the birds to pick them clean?
Or of immolating the living wife of the deceased Hindu?

A line has to be drawn somewhere or civilisation will cease to exist

David Chorley, Wednesbury, England

Politically correct judges are now accommodating all manner of customs wholly foreign to the British tradition of civilization, here's yet another. 'Group rights' rule OK - why not individual tastes? Still, this is not such a breach of westsern cutlural law as is halal slaughter, approved by our MPs and now a huge scale exemption to animal cruelty legislation. In fact that legislation is becoming a minority interest as state schools accept halal as the simplest option, even for non Muslims. This multi-cultural law making is causing deep contradictions and fragmentation.

T, Oxford, UK

What would happen in an area where the burning of non smoke less fuels is against the local by laws?

If the practice is carried out at designated Crematoria in a controlled dignified and private manner I personally wouldn't have a problem with it, as long as there are safeguards in place to ensure any smell/smoke/debris cannot drift over inhabited areas. As has already been stated this is a practice carried out for a long long time……..not only here on earth but also by the Jedi’s (another hokey old religion) in a galaxy far far away so why shouldn’t it be allowed

This would also allow a whole host of other “ancient” burial ceremonies to take place e.g. People of Viking decent could be cremated aboard burning Long boats as they drifted out to sea.

Andrew, Chester,

dear english countrymen,s this much better then other kind of cremations this is 7500 year old eco-friendly process and it does not require wastage of land and also maintains dignity of dead body where in most parts of the world due to lack of space after burrying the body again dig up for another and i can lay bat on it it is not pollutant one day the glory of indian culture will revive .......

akhil , new delhi, india

Gas powered crematoria require the "scrubbers" I assume due to there using fossil fuels (gas) to burn the body inside. A big pile of wood and a body can be said to be pretty much carbon neutral.

I'm not a Hindu myself but the idea appeals when my time comes. Let's not confuse green issues with freedom of choice and use it to take a pop at anothers beliefs.

Tim, Ely,

Once again, Joe from Manchester has proved that bigotry is alive and well!

nadine, Manchester,

This is a civilised country. If these Hindus want to practice their heathen ceremonies of burning corpses on open pyres then they should return to their origins and do it in India or wherever they originally came here from. In this day and age, in this country, there is no way that this minority religion should get its way, it would take us back to the dark ages if they were allowed to do so. It seems that there are still minorities who have chosen to live here who still refuse to integrate with the indiginous population. We have rules on how to dispose of dead bodies and Hindus must adhere to them. Already the Hindus are not treated the same as the rest of us when they die, the indiginous mainly christian population have to undergo post mortem examinations upon death which is terribly upsetting to surviving relatives, yet the Hindus are rarely subjected to this mainly because their religion says they should be disposed of within something like 24 hours.

michael pickles, bournemouth, uk

What is happening to England or should I say the legal trash that make these ridiculous judgments, I think the country is just about finished. Also lets not forget
the amount of carbon being produced how will Blair handle this?

Barry Holmes, Christchurch, New Zealand