Government lawyers will tell a High Court judge next week that allowing an elderly man’s last wish would be abhorrent to the majority of the British population. The man likely to cause such offence is a Hindu aged 70 who wants to follow the dictates of his religion by having a natural cremation on a funeral pyre.

There may be some justification for the Government’s squeamish belief that its citizens would find the traditional funeral rites of a faith with 900 million worldwide adherents “extremely disturbing”.

It speaks, after all, on behalf of a Protestant nation that does not really do death. It discusses it in whispers and specialises in putting a lid on it.

What may seem more surprising is the fierce hostility that the legal action has aroused in some quarters among Britain’s 558,000 Hindus.

The National Council for Hindu Priests, in common with most British Hindu organisations, supports the man’s claim, viewing it as “the single most significant campaign to promote Hindu religious freedom in British history”. But a Hindu academic, Jay Lakhani, has called it an “horrendous idea” that seeks to promote antiquated practices that would make Hinduism “look very outlandish, out of date and completely irrational”.

Davender Kumar Ghai, the devout Hindu at the centre of the case, fits no one’s idea of a radical minority-rights activist.

He has lived in Britain since 1958, is the founding president of the Anglo-Asian Friendship Society and the holder of a Unesco Peace Gold Medal and an Amnesty International lifetime achievement award.

Mr Ghai, from Newcastle-upon- Tyne, is in poor health and his final wish is to die in the knowledge that his son will be allowed to set ablaze an open-air pyre that will consume his body but, he believes, liberate his soul.

“I have lived my entire life by the Hindu scriptures. I now yearn to die by them and I do not believe that natural cremation grounds — as long as they were discreet, designated sites far from urban and residential areas — would offend public decency.

“My loyalty is to Britain’s values of fairness, tolerance and freedom. If I cannot die as a true Hindu, it will mean those values have died too.”

He is challenging Newcastle City Council’s refusal to allow a designated site for open-air cremations. If the judicial review is successful, such sites could spring up around the country.

Three years ago, in a secluded field in Northumberland, The Times witnessed the lighting of Britain’s first open-air funeral pyre since the Home Office authorised one for a Nepalese princess at Woking in 1934.