<P> The cremation ground is called Shmashana (in Sanskrit), and traditionally it is located near a river, if not on the river bank itself . Those who can afford it may go to special sacred places like Kashi (Varanasi), Haridwar, Allahabad, Sri Rangam, Brahmaputra on the occasion of Ashokastami and Rameswaram to complete this rite of immersion of ashes into water . </P> <P> Both manual bamboo wood pyres and electric cremation are used for Hindu cremations . For the latter, the body is kept on a bamboo frame on rails near the door of the electric chamber . After cremation, the mourner collect the ashes and consecrate it to a water body, such as a river or sea . </P> <P> Hindus brought into Trinidad as indentured laborers for plantations between 1845 and 1917, by the British colonial government, suffered discriminatory laws that did not allow cremation, and other rites of passage such as the traditional marriage, because the colonial officials considered these as pagan and uncivilized barbaric practices . The non-Hindu government further did not allow the construction of crematorium . After decades of social organization and petitions, the Hindus of Trinidad gained the permission to practice their traditional rites of passage including Antyesti in the 1950s, and build the first crematorium in 1980s . </P> <P> In the United Kingdom, it was formerly illegal to conduct a traditional outdoors Hindu cremation under the 1902 Cremation Act, with Hindus having to cremate their dead in indoor crematoriums instead . In 2006, Daven Ghai, a British Hindu who had been refused the right to have a traditional funeral by Newcastle City Council, brought a case to court in which he claimed that the current law did in fact allow open air cremations, so long as they were in some enclosed building and away from the public . A High Court ruling disagreed with his claim, and the - then Justice Secretary Jack Straw stated that the British public would "find it abhorrent that human remains were being burned in this way ." Nonetheless, upon taking it to the Court of Appeals in 2010, the judge, Lord Justice Neuberger, ruled that such a cremation would be legal under the 1902 Act, so long as it was performed within a building, even an open - air one . Upon his victory, Ghai told reporters that "I always maintained that I wanted to clarify the law, not disobey or disrespect it" and expressed regret at the amount that the trial had cost the taxpayer . He stated that he was thankful that he now had "the right to be cremated with the sun shining on my body and my son lighting the pyre" and he and other Hindus and Sikhs in the country had begun investigations into finding a site upon which they could perform the funerary ceremonies . </P>

Traditional hindu funeral rituals include the following elements