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WE are here for a short duration in eternity. Sooner or later, every human being is to die as the Holy Quran says “Every soul shall taste death, then to Us will you be returned” (29:57).
With death, the connection between the human soul and body terminates, the soul takes its own flight while the body requires disposal in the shape of burial or cremation. Burial is used by the major Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. According to some sources, the tradition of burial in Islam is based on an event, as described in the Quran, when a son of Hazrat Adam killed his brother. As per the Holy Book, Allah sent a crow who scratched the ground to show him how to hide the dead body of his brother. Therefore, different Muslim communities bury their dead according to their specific culture and traditions.
The death of any family member is a sombre occasion but the untimely death of any member in some tragic accident is all the more poignant. At this point, the bereaved family needs not only soothing words for their grieving hearts but also practical help to arrange the burial.
Families need succour in their hour of grief.
Imagine a family who loses a loved one all of a sudden. The family knows nothing about the burial procedure; it needs succour in its hour of grief, to acquire a burial space in an already saturated graveyard. Though the graveyard is owned by the local government, dealing with the gravedigger is an ordeal one must pass through. Besides, arranging for a hearse, fixing time for the funeral procession and receiving condolences from visitors all make the tragedy more taxing.
In addition to the above, the family has to complete legal formalities such as the death certificate; it has to ask someone to bathe and shroud the body. This requires extraordinary skill, so the entire family and its friends have to contribute for the orderly performance of all rituals and the burial itself.
On such an occasion financial concerns are also critically important, especially for poor or middle-class families. They have to draw money from all sources in order to arrange for a decent burial. Sometimes borrowers remain indebted for a number of years.
In rural areas, some families bury their dead in their ancestral graveyard while others use some corner of their fields as a graveyard. In major cities and towns, government-owned cemeteries are used but they are in a messy condition.
Every major city of Pakistan has witnessed an enormous growth of population over the last few decades. Different private groups of builders and contractors have come up with different housing projects, township schemes and high-rise buildings to meet growing needs. But no plan to establish public graveyards seems to be in sight. Presently, government-owned graveyards are infested with anti-social elements/mafias who charge exorbitant rates for grave spaces, digging and burial rites.
Nowadays, it is not easy for a bereaved family to undertake all such burial-related activities singlehandedly without the help of relatives or neighbours. Though many people stand with the bereaved family in their hour of grief, sometimes people are too hesitant to come forward to actually help in the process of bathing, shrouding and burying the dead.
There is a dearth of professionals who can carry out activities leading to a decent burial in a respectful manner and to the satisfaction of the bereaved family. Sometimes, the family makes urgent calls to various corners seeking help to arrange funeral services such as bathing the body, shrouding it and then reciting and performing certain rituals like namaz-i-janazah, fateha and dua, watering the grave, laying wreaths and burning incense over the grave etc before saying their final goodbye.
Due to urbanisation and modern lifestyles, people live in small apartments where it is extremely difficult to bathe the dead body. Besides, few are fully competent and aware of the specific procedure of bathing the dead as required under Sharia.
Keeping in view the difficulties faced by bereaved families, some rethinking at the government level is the need of the hour. The government should not allow anti-social elements to hold the bereaved families hostage to their strange ways. The authorities may think of devolving/outsourcing the management of cemeteries to approved NGOs by making them responsible to help bereaved families. The government may also arrange funding to help the poor and needy in discharging their responsibilities connected with the last rites.
There are certain organised communities in Pakistan who have built purposeful, fully equipped rooms; they provide coffins and other burial material to help bereaved families in their hour of grief. They have their own community-based cemeteries where one can find centuries-old graves along with the record of their burial. They can be helpful in devising official plans for such services for the public at large.
The writer is an educationist with an interest in religion.
Published in Dawn, July 15th, 2016
