Gandhi's ashes scattered off coast of South Africa

SOME of Gandhi's ashes were scattered off the coast of South Africa yesterday, more than six decades after his death.

During an early-morning service at a harbour in Durban, on the 62nd anniversary of Gandhi's death, flowers and candles were also laid on the water's surface. Gandhi lived for 21 years in South Africa, and some of his philosophies were developed there.

Known as the Mahatma or "great soul", Gandhi was shot dead in 1948 by a Hindu hardliner in New Delhi. His ashes were divided, stored in steel urns and sent across India and beyond for memorial services. It was not unusual for some of the ashes to have been preserved instead of scattered. In 2007, some were sent to a Gandhi museum in Mumbai by an Indian businessman whose father, a friend of Gandhi, had saved them.

Those ashes were scattered in the sea off Mumbai in 2008. In 1997, ashes found in a bank vault in northern India were immersed at the holy spot where India's Ganges and Yamuna rivers meet.

Soon after his arrival in South Africa in 1893, Gandhi, then a young lawyer, was thrown off a train for refusing to leave the "whites only" compartment. As a result, he threw himself into the fight for human rights in South Africa. He lived in homes and farms across South Africa, before returning to India at the age of 46 to help fight for independence from Britain.