The BJP’s propaganda machine spun out an endless well-hyped narrative on the Maha Kumbh 2025. Newspaper ads, celebrities, photo ops, and TV visuals accompanied by orchestral devotional music. All of it was designed to showcase this year’s Kumbh as somehow an epochal, civilisation-defining event that has apparently taken place for “the first time in 144 years”.
I covered the Maha Kumbh in both 2001 and 2013, the first time when I was a print reporter with Outlook magazine, and the second time in 2013 when I worked in television. Both times, I witnessed firsthand what a meaningful spiritual journey the Kumbh can be. I saw that the festival is really about an intimate communion between individual pilgrims and the river Ganga. This time, the hype, marketing, VIPs with their entourages, religious tourism, and ostentatious publicity distracted from the festival’s quiet contemplative character.
The Kumbh is supposed to provide a space for spiritual longing and reflection. But the BJP made it a spectacle of event management, with political bigwigs hogging the limelight.
The BJP is trying to project almost as if there were no Kumbh Melas before 2025. But my relationship with the Kumbh began in 2001. I went to the 2001 Maha Kumbh as a rationalist and a sceptic, yet watched astounded as millions of people, in perfect peace and quiet, became somehow ennobled by the presence of the river and the sun. I had expected raucous crowds, empty rituals, and dreadful squalor. Instead, I found dignity and introspection. There were rogues and tricksters aplenty, but I also found seekers and philosophers, chemistry professors and poets for whom god was a search for the energies and ideas that shape our cosmos.
Common pilgrim at Kumbh
On Mauni Amavasya in 2001, I participated in the 4 am snan (holy bath). A carpet of stars stretched overhead in a completely clear sky. The mighty grey river flowed along. And on the riverbank stood a massive silent throng of pilgrims. For me, this was the perfect setting to see Hinduism in all its diversity and spiritual depth.
In that all-enveloping quiet, something huge and mysterious seemed to enter our senses. It was as if the presence of the galaxy settled above our heads and the universe itself looked down at us from above. In that vast quiet, with the expanse of river faintly lit by the dizzying array of stars overhead, some may even have felt the presence of Brahma. Such was the magic of that special snan time at the Sangam, expertly calculated to sync with the movement of stars.
I came away from the Kumbh with my rational self jolted awake to its enormity. The feather-light, buoyant quality of the river waters and the soft sunlight seemed to encourage a certain waywardness, a pulling back from the rat race to search for one’s own truth. After all, the Kumbh is the domain of the Naga sadhu, who stands for shunning the material world, taking the road less travelled, and a meditative quest on why we have been put on the earth.
The Kumbh showcases the diversity of Hinduism. Shaivites, Vaishnavites, worshippers of a range of shrines and temples, devotees from religions outside Hinduism, myriad cults and temple establishments—all come to the Kumbh. There is no single priest or a single mode of worship here. All are free to embrace the river and perform whatever rituals they desire. Some perform shraadh for the departed, some seek blessings for new ventures, while some bring children to bathe in the Ganga.
At the centre of the Kumbh, as I saw it in 2001 and 2013, is the common, often poor, rural pilgrim. Trudging along in silence, bowed down with belongings, often trailing children and the elderly, yet intent on that one moment of communion with water and sun, she is the true symbol of the Kumbh.
Yet, this time in the fog of the BJP’s mass-produced videos, high-pitched publicity blitz, and the trotting out of bombastic numbers, we did not even see the pilgrim. Instead, the media only beamed out pictures of VIPs in their photo-op snans and their branded accessories. Rs 2 lakh crore revenue! 400 million people! Over 66 crore people on bathing days! Over 1.4 crore taking a dip during Mahashivratri! The BJP government in Uttar Pradesh kept reeling off spectacular numbers as the mainstream media kept up its breathless shrieky coverage.
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Of celebrities, stampedes & politics
We saw the rich and famous bathe in their cordoned-off VIP patches and we saw pilgrims killed in stampedes. In the terrible stampede that occurred on 29 January, the government was accused of not giving out accurate numbers of dead. The BJP forgot that it is the faith of the ordinary everyman and everywoman devotee that has sustained the Kumbh for centuries.
This year, reports of water pollution at the Kumbh were waved away by the BJP government in UP. Why were adequate arrangements not made to sanitise the water when so much hype had been created around the mela leading to a massive public rush? The tragic stampede and loss of life at New Delhi railway station on 15 February because of confusion regarding the Prayagraj Express also shows shocking gaps in infrastructural planning when such vast numbers were expected to attend.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has written a blog on the Kumbh, showing the BJP’s eagerness to co-opt the Kumbh into its brand of religious politics. Modi seeks political legitimacy from religion and by yoking himself to gods. But the Kumbh has never needed political protection. Those who have adhered to the Hindu faith have never been asked to swear allegiance to a particular political party. The Kumbh reflects the Hinduism of Krishna Chaitanya and Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, of the Bhakti saints and the philosophers of the Upanishads. It does not need the BJP.
At the Kumbh Mela, there are no priests to mediate between the individual and his relationship with sun and river. The pilgrim comes in solitude. The Hinduism of the Kumbh is not a creed for political power. The gentle human-ness of the Kumbh should not be tainted by aggressive political showmanship.
The Kumbh teaches us that Hinduism is unconquerable precisely because it is so undefined and varied and diverse. Who would a Hindu take up the sword for? For the Shaivite? For the Vaishnavite? For the tantric? For the Naga sadhu?
“As soon as India accepts the doctrine of the sword, (or violence) my life as an Indian is finished,” said Gandhi.
The Kumbh is the very antithesis of violence or dominance. It stands for freedom of choice, freedom of worship, and the freedom offered by that massive open space next to India’s longest river, the Ganga. By politicising Hinduism, the BJP is taking away its unique power.
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Plurality in Kumbh
The “first-time-in-144-years” is another spin that I have never heard before in my decades of covering the Kumbh. The BJP’s idea is to dwarf all the other Kumbhs and posit 2025 as somehow an out-of-the-ordinary colossus. But this claim does not fit with the fact that Kumbh Mela takes place regularly. The accepted cycles for the Kumbh are the “Ardh Kumbh”, held every six years, and the “Maha Kumbh”, held every 12 years.
In many ways, the Kumbh is a giant village fair that also provides a social welfare safety net for the poorest, as all the religious orders provide free meals and shelter to pilgrims. The Kumbh provides succour for an India that has been left behind, as the poorest of the poor can come here for food and a roof over their heads. The last thing that the Kumbh is about is celebrities, luxury tents, exclusive access to the Sangam, or the quest for political supremacy.
The very idea of this egalitarian mela is that everybody is equal next to the river. Everybody is free. And the chillum-smoking Naga Baba invites everyone to soak up the unique air of a tolerant, all-accepting religion. “Jato mat tato path (There are many roads to God),” said Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. This principle is so evident at the Kumbh Mela.
The Kumbh Mela, as I witnessed twice over 12 years, is an awesome display of Hinduism at its most tolerant, peaceful, and diverse. Millions gather for their own distinctive forms of worship. There is no monotheism at the Kumbh.
The BJP’s politicisation of religion is destroying both religion and politics. It is deeply disturbing to see the BJP seek so much political mileage out of a festival that celebrates Hinduism’s uniquely non-materialistic, other-worldly, and renunciatory identity. The Kumbh is a highly personal journey, the BJP should not have made it a political one.
Sagarika Ghose is a Rajya Sabha MP, All India Trinamool Congress. She tweets @sagarikaghose. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)
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