MUMBAI: India commemorated the 60th anniversary of Mohandas K Gandhi’s assassination on Wednesday with his great granddaughter scattering the peace icon’s ashes in the sea off the country’s most bustling metropolis.

Gandhi, who led the non-violent struggle for independence from Britain, is still revered as the moral conscience of the nation and pictures of his wizened, smiling face are everywhere in India, from the country’s rupee notes to murals along the highway.

To honour the non-violence leader, Gandhi’s followers carried his ashes through the streets of Mumbai to the coast of the Arabian Sea. Some 300 people, including schoolchildren and elderly followers, watched as Gandhi’s family members took the ashes nearly 1.5km into the sea on a decorated motorboat.

There, his frail 75-year-old great granddaughter, Neelam Parikh, spread his ashes into the ocean as other relatives clasped their hands and bowed their heads in prayer.

“It’s an emotional day for us and also a day for deep thought. A day that we should remember him and remind ourselves of his teachings,” she said afterward.

Tushar Gandhi, one of Gandhi’s great grandsons, called it “a day to remember the honesty and simplicity he stood for.”

Gandhi’s ashes were preserved by an Indian businessman who sent them to a museum in Mumbai last year. The museum had planned to display the ashes, but Gandhi’s family said he would have preferred them scattered at sea.

A prayer ceremony was planned for later on Wednesday at the New Delhi house where Gandhi was killed by a Hindu extremist in 1948, just months after the nation was born. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, the head of India’s ruling Congress party, are expected to attend. Sonia Gandhi is the widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister and Mohandas Gandhi’s close friend.

Parikh, who led Wednesday’s ceremony off Mumbai, is the granddaughter of Gandhi’s eldest son, Harilal, who was estranged from his father and did not attend his funeral, breaking with Hindu tradition under which the eldest son should light the father’s funeral pyre.

Giving Parikh a central role on Wednesday was intended as a symbolic gesture of reconciliation.“It’s the correct thing to do, since Gandhi’s three younger sons’ families have participated in earlier funeral rituals,” another of Gandhi’s granddaughters, Usha Gokani, said before the ceremony.

Hindus cremate their dead and the ashes are supposed to be scattered in rivers or the sea after 13 days. But after he was killed, Gandhi’s ashes were sent to villages and towns across India for memorial services by his followers. It’s not known how many — or if any — urns containing his ashes still exist.

The last time an urn was found was in 1997 in a bank vault in northern India. Those ashes were later immersed at the confluence of the Ganges and the Yamuna rivers, considered sacred by Hindus.

The ashes immersed on Wednesday had been kept by Sriman Narayan, a close friend of the freedom leader. After his death, his son sent them to the museum in keeping with Narayan’s will.—AP