Sitting samadhi norm at Banganga Hindu cemetery

In a graveyard on Malabar Hill, the hanging roots of banyan trees sweep the tops of stone graves. Children play behind tombstones and clotheslines zigzag between low-hanging branches. The Shree Santosh Giri Dashnami Akhada - dotted with encroachments - is an unusual burial ground because it belongs to a Hindu sect, the Dashnami Goswami community that buries its dead sitting upright in padmasana.Measuring 4,646 square yards, the cemetery is also a piece of prime property overlooking the sea and near Banganga tank. The nonchalance of its residents is remarkable considering the graveyard is still in use. A caretaker confirmed that a burial took place about a year ago.
Today, most of Mumbai's approximately 50,000 Dashnami Goswamis - made up of 10 monastic orders - have discarded their forefathers' saffron robes, started families, and taken up jobs. But they still refuse to be cremated like other Hindus. "Taking samadhi is our tradition," says Dr Krishnadeo Giri, who helped found the Hindu Dharmaguru Dashnam Goswami Akhada a year ago. “Would you ask Muslims or Christians why they want to be buried?“
The Goswami community has elaborate burial rituals. The body is rubbed with ash, dressed in saffron robes with a rudraksh mala around its neck, and a jhola under one arm. After a few months, a square-shaped stone samadhi is built over the burial site. Male graves of this Shaivaite sect are adorned with intricately carved Shivlings and Nandi bulls, while females tombs have padukas (slippers) engraved on them, says former trustee Khimgiri Goswami.
In the 8th century CE, Hindu reformer Adi Shankaracharya divided sanyasis into 10 monastic orders called 'Dashnami'. While two of these 10 - Bharti and Saraswati - are named after the goddesses of speech and learning, the rest like Giri (mountain peak), Puri (town), and Tirtha (shrine) probably refer to where members of that order would pursue their calling. Together, they make up the Dashnami Goswami samaj.
No one knows exactly when this spot came to be used as a 'samadhi sthan' but community members agree it was named after a sadhu, who once resided there, a Shree Santosh Giri. On the far end of the graveyard, a stone crypt, ­ painted orange, ­ houses the remains of Baba Alakh, who legend has it was buried alive in a meditative state. Another marble crypt with an onion dome commemorates Shri Bharati Krishna Tirth, the 143rd Shankaracharya of the Govardhan monastery in Odisha, who died in 1960. He wrote Vedic Mathematics, a book of mental calculation techniques, which he claimed was based on the Vedas. In a break from tradition, a pair of padukas instead of a Shivling is engraved on his samadhi.The graveyard is also the final resting place of Paramhansa Shree Sadanand Saraswati (Swami Sawant Maharaj), a Marathi saint, who died in 1965. His smiling marble statue, donning a saffron robe, adorns his samadhi.
Inevitably, considering its location, the akhada is embroiled in a land dispute with its trustees vying to sell the property, while some community members fight to save it. In 2012, journalist Asha Goswami's community magazine ran covers of the historic samadhis crying tears of blood and exclaiming “Save Us“. The trustees, however, insist that their hands are tied. In the early 1990s, the Shree Dashnami Goswami (Gosai) Community Trust, which has controlled the akhada since the mid-1940s, decided to develop a vacant portion of the land and entered into an MoU with a builder. That sale was thwarted and now the trust owes a large amount of money. The sale and subsequent relocation of the samadhis will be decided by the charity commissioner's court, says Dushyant N Goswami, who became a trustee in 2005.
Residents of the approximately 10 homes within the graveyard, who don't belong to the Goswami community, might complicate the land deal. According to Dushyant, they've been around since the 1970s and receive rent receipts from the trust but he isn't able to explain why they were allowed to settle there in the first place. Kishore Parab, a 33-year-old IT engineer, has lived in the cemetery his entire life. He grew up watching bodies being interred and can't remember ever feeling squeamish about the corpses encircling his home. "I don't like the flat system," he says. "This place is like a mini-village."
Even as the trust lobbies to sell the Akhada, other community organizations are petitioning for more cemeteries. Dr Krishnadeo Giri of the Hindu Dharmaguru Dashnam Goswami Akhada wrote a letter to Chief Minister Ashok Chavan in 2009 asking that five vacant acres in the suburbs be handed over to the community for their last rites. "Today, the gurus of Hinduism," he said, "don't even have place for their funeral rites in Hindustan."