Ashes and Flowers: some Hindu approaches to death and dying

Contemporary interest in death and dying in the West has provoked reflection upon other cultural and religious traditions. Many writers assume that just as health and death are predominantly in the West the realm of the clinical so in India they are in the realm of the sacred. This article rejects this oversimplification and explores the complexity of Hindu approaches to death and dying through an examination of the varied attitudes, beliefs and practices of pilgrims, pilgrimage priests and renouncers in the sacred pilgrimage centres of Hardwar and Rishikesh. It argues that the resources offered by the culture for responding to death and dying are used creatively and contextually by many Hindus in ways that depend very much on their personal experience and individual narratives as well as the social pressures and traditions operating around them.