For three years, Aditi Samarth travelled looking for death. Rituals of death to be precise. Of the Hindu kind. The professor of Humanities at a community college in Dallas (USA) recently finished a thesis – The Survival of Hindu Cremation Myths and Rituals in 21st Century Practice – on the difference in Hindu death rituals in Dallas, Maldives and Bali.

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As a daughter of NRI parents, Samarth schooled in Panchgani, Maharashtra, while home base was the Arabian island of Bahrain. She moved to USA as a teenager to study art and has lived there ever since.

"I have lived my entire life as a diaspora," says the 48-year-old. "Rituals and ceremonies express and maintain one's cultural, religious, linguistic, and socio-economic identities, but in a new homeland they enable the diaspora communities to negotiate compatibility with native populations and to establish an identity. I wanted to study how diaspora communities retain their traditions through rituals and ceremonies in the final rites of passage. Also, I was curious to know how the dead are memorialised in cultures lacking of physical memorials, such as tombs or graves."

Samarth found the Balinese funeral processions rambunctious with music and dance. "Hindusim came to Bali through Java, not ethnic Indians, in the 10th and 11th centuries," says Samarth. "It remained structured and hierarchical since it asserted the royalty's divine right to rule – the king was seen as Vishnu, the protector."

On the other hand, in Mauritus, which was a plantocracy, the religion came with the involuntary migration of a labour force that now forms 68 per cent of the population. "No matter how divisional Hinduism is in India," explains Samarth, "it was presented in a more homogenised manner to form a political and socio-economic identity of a population that wanted to assert 'We are not going anywhere. This is our home.' So the cremations in Mauritius closely follow the Vedic model. Mauritian Hindus pride themselves in being more Hindu than the Hindus of India."

In sanitised America, funerals were governed by city and state laws and held in funeral homes with distilled rituals. "Everything in America is a business, and in that sense, Hindu are not a great source of income," say Samarth. "You can't sell Hindus a $15,000 hardwood cherry casket because – in the family's view – it does not help anybody's karma. So most family go for a cheap casket for the viewing of the body, which is finally cremated in a sort of sturdy cardboard box."

"The first Hindus came to Dallas as students in the 1960s," Samarth says. "The community here is not even 100 years old. So the positional power of the community came from education, not religion." They were also a minority keen on being seen as socially progressive. Hence, their rituals are more scientific.

"Hindu final rites are evolutionary, rather than revolutionary," she says. "Despite technological advances in cremations, Hindu rituals hold the cremation, immersion, and release of the soul as the backbone of the final rites. This is consistent among the three Hindu cultures despite their many differences."

A tour, through pictures, gives us an idea of how the rituals, though rooted in ancient traditions, differ widely across regions.

Bali likes it boisterous

In Bali, funeral processions are hearty celebrations, sometimes involving a few neighbourhoods (banjars). Women from each neighbourhood will colour-co-ordinate their costumes and carry offerings of rice cakes, incense, flours, sweetmeat and coins in a procession.

If the deceased belongs to a high caste, the remains are ensconced in a paper-mache effigy – a bull, elevated on a pedestal. Mantras are performed, the effigy is blessed with holy water, coins are left for Yama, the god of death, and set ablaze.

As the pyre burns, funeral dancers perform a ritual dance – the Baris Gede. The dance is intended to assist the departing soul in its journey to the afterlife.

Meanwhile, the 'revellers' settle into a sort of picnic in the crematorium grounds – spreading sheets to sit on, opening and sharing food, card games commence among the men.

Since funerals tend to be an expensive affair, many times, a family will bury their dead – sometimes for years – until enough money accumulates for the cremation ceremony.

Mauritius keeps it ancient

In Mauritius, the rituals are ascetic and closely follow the Vedic model and the Garuda Purana. "For instance, originally, the mourners would wait till the family paid a tax to the Chandala," says the author. "Now, even though there is no tax to be paid, the mourners will wait around a bit before leave." Women are not allowed into the funeral grounds.

Due to limited availability and high cost of timber, aluminium caskets decorated with flowers are used. It is not rented out on profit but shared by a community and carried, or driven, to the cremation centre.

While most ceremonies across geographic locations are performed by male priests, Samarth found one exception. In Mauritius, a Sudra priestess performed an Arya Samaj ritual.

Myths are created to assert their socio-political status within an island that was once a French colony and then a British one. The Grand Basin is know as Ganga talao to Mauritian Hindus, and is a ritual centre. In a flight of fantastic imagination, someone said Hanuman flew to the region surrounding the lake to get the Sanjeevani booti Lakshman, as per Ramayana. Another myth talks of a subterranean connection between the two water bodies.

Recently, water from the Ganges was ceremonially brought and blended with into the Ganga Talao, imbuing it with sacral properties.

Dallas is scientific

The cremation homes are not specific to any community – they cover all religions, and an assembly hall will serve for vedic rituals, as well as it would for a Jewish or Christian funeral. There is usually some sort of removable banner in the background – an 'Aum' which can be changed to a Cross or Star of David.