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Dubai: It was because of his mother's deep admiration for Mahatma Gandhi that the last-known urn containing the ashes of India's independence icon had been preserved, a Dubai-based Indian businessman told Gulf News.
Sixty years to the day when Gandhi was shot dead, the copper urn containing his ashes was immersed in the Arabian Sea by his great granddaughter Nilamben Parikh yesterday.
The urn was bequeathed to the Gandhi family in 2006 by businessman Bharat Narayan, whose father had been a close friend of Gandhi.
Narayan, 66, told Gulf News the urn was brought to their house from Delhi by his grandmother.
"Nearly a dozen urns containing Gandhi's ashes were distributed across India after his assassination ... Two urns were kept in our house in Maharashtra. One of them was immersed some time back, while the other remained in our house."
Narayan, a Dubai resident for 32 years, said his mother's reverence for Gandhi made it impossible to scatter the ashes as per Hindu rites. "Since the urn could not be taken outside India, we decided to give it to the Gandhi family," he said.
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