Scarf, Comb Show Changes to Hindu Cremation Rites

A comb of a deceased COVID-19 victim lies in a cremation ground in Gauhati, India, Friday, July 2, 2021.  It's a fundamental change from the rites and traditions that surround death in the Hindu religion. Anupam Nath/AP
A comb of a deceased COVID-19 victim lies in a cremation ground in Gauhati, India, Friday, July 2, 2021. It's a fundamental change from the rites and traditions that surround death in the Hindu religion. Anupam Nath/AP
TT
20

Scarf, Comb Show Changes to Hindu Cremation Rites

A comb of a deceased COVID-19 victim lies in a cremation ground in Gauhati, India, Friday, July 2, 2021.  It's a fundamental change from the rites and traditions that surround death in the Hindu religion. Anupam Nath/AP
A comb of a deceased COVID-19 victim lies in a cremation ground in Gauhati, India, Friday, July 2, 2021. It's a fundamental change from the rites and traditions that surround death in the Hindu religion. Anupam Nath/AP

A comb. A toothbrush. A bangle. A cotton scarf — protection from the summer heat now used as a face mask.

The personal belongings of cremated COVID-19 victims lie strewn around the grounds of the Ulubari cremation ground in Gauhati, the biggest city in India’s remote northeast.

It's a fundamental change from the rites and traditions that surround death in the Hindu religion. And, perhaps, also reflects the grim fears grieving people — shaken by the deaths of their loved ones — have of the coronavirus in India, where more than 405,000 people have died.

Hindus believe cremation of the body frees the soul so it can be reborn, and they often burn belongings that were with the body at the time of the death.

The belongings of the COVID-19 victims are left behind because of fear of touching them. They are scattered around the entire grounds of the Ulubari crematorium, particularly where the pyres are lit, according to the Associated Press.

India’s devastating virus surge in April and May left families and patients pleading for oxygen outside hospitals, the relatives weeping in the street as their loved ones died while waiting for treatment. Crematoriums were overwhelmed and often lit around the clock.

Infections are declining, but authorities are pushing to increase vaccinations as they prepare for another possible surge.



Prince Harry Retraces Diana’s Footsteps by Walking Through a Land Mine Field in Angola for Charity

 16 July 2025, Angola, Luanda: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, walks through a minefield in Cuito Cuanavale. (PA Media/dpa)
16 July 2025, Angola, Luanda: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, walks through a minefield in Cuito Cuanavale. (PA Media/dpa)
TT
20

Prince Harry Retraces Diana’s Footsteps by Walking Through a Land Mine Field in Angola for Charity

 16 July 2025, Angola, Luanda: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, walks through a minefield in Cuito Cuanavale. (PA Media/dpa)
16 July 2025, Angola, Luanda: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, walks through a minefield in Cuito Cuanavale. (PA Media/dpa)

Prince Harry followed in his late mother's footsteps on Wednesday by wearing a flak jacket and walking down a path in an active land mine field in Angola to raise awareness for a charity's work clearing explosives from old warzones.

The Duke of Sussex is in the southern African country with the Halo Trust organization, the same group Princess Diana worked with when she went to Angola in January 1997, seven months before she was killed in a car crash in Paris.

Diana's advocacy and the images of her walking through a minefield helped mobilize support for a land mine ban treaty that was ratified later that year.

Harry walked through a land mine field near a village in Cuito Cuanavale in southern Angola, according to Halo Trust. It's not the first time he has retraced his mother's steps after traveling to Angola for a similar awareness campaign in 2019.

The land mines across Angola were left behind from its 27-year civil war from 1975 to 2002. The Halo Trust says at least 60,000 people have been killed or injured by land mines since 2008. It says it has located and destroyed over 120,000 land mines and 100,000 other explosive devices in Angola since it started work in the country in 1994, but 1,000 minefields still need to be cleared.