Burning the Dead

2021 · Book · David John Arnold

"Burning the Dead traces the evolution of cremation in India and the South Asian diaspora across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Through interconnected histories of movement, space, identity, and affect, it examines how the "traditional" practice of Hindu cremation on an open-air funeral pyre was culturally transformed and materially refashioned under British rule, following intense Western hostility, colonial sanitary acceptance, and Indian adaptation. The book examines the critical reception of Hindu cremation abroad, particularly in Britain, where India formed a primary reference point for the cremation debates of the late nineteenth century, and it explores the struggle for the official recognition of cremation among Hindu and Sikh communities around the globe. Above all, David Arnold foregrounds the growing public presence and assertive political use made of Hindu cremation, its increasingly social inclusivity, and its close identification with Hindu reform movements and modern Indian nationhood"-- by David John Arnold