Millions of Hindu devotees, mystics and holy men and women from across India gathered in the northern city of Prayagraj on Monday to begin the Maha Kumbh festival, touted as the world’s largest religious gathering.
Over the next six weeks, Hindu pilgrims will gather at the confluence of three sacred rivers – the Ganges, the Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati – where they will participate in elaborate rituals and achieve the ultimate goal of Hindu philosophy. I look forward to starting my journey. Liberation from reincarnation.
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Here’s what you need to know about the festival.
Religious gathering at the confluence of three sacred rivers
Hindus revere rivers, and none are more important than the Ganges and Yamuna. Believers believe that taking a dip in water, especially on auspicious days, cleanses one’s past sins and ends the process of reincarnation. The most auspicious of these days occurs every 12 years during a festival called Maha Kumbh Mela (Festival of Water Jugs).
Hindu devotees pray before taking a bath at the confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati rivers on the first day of the 45-day Maha Kumbh festival in Prayagraj, India, January 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia)
The festival is a series of ritual baths performed by Hindu sadhus, or saints and other pilgrims, at the confluence of three sacred rivers, and its origins date back to at least the Middle Ages. Hindus believe that the mythical Saraswati river once flowed from the Himalayas through Prayagraj, where it joined the Ganges and Yamuna rivers.
Bathing takes place daily, but on the most auspicious days, naked monks covered in ash rush toward the sacred river at dawn. Many pilgrims stay throughout the festival, observing penance, giving alms, and bathing each day at sunrise.
“We feel peace here and find relief from the cycle of life and death,” said pilgrim Bhagwat Prasad Tiwari.
The festival has its roots in a Hindu tradition in which Lord Vishnu snatched a golden pitcher containing the nectar of immortality from the devil. Hindus believe that the drops fell on four cities – Prayagraj, Nashik, Ujjain and Haridwar, where Kumbh festivals have been held for centuries.
A monk dances with other monks as Hindu saints walk in procession on the eve of the 45-day Maha Kumbh festival in Prayagraj, India, on January 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia)
The Kumbh tours these four pilgrimage sites approximately every three years on astrologically determined dates. This year’s festival is the largest and grandest of all. In 2019, a smaller version of the festival called Ardo Kumbh (Half Kumbh) was held and recorded 240 million visitors, with around 50 million people attending the ceremonial event on the busiest day. took a bath.
Maha Kumbh is the largest such gathering in the world
At least 400 million people, more than the population of the United States, are expected to stay in Prayagraj over the next 45 days, officials said. This is about 200 times more than the 2 million pilgrims who arrived in Saudi Arabia’s Muslim holiest cities of Mecca and Medina last year for the annual Hajj pilgrimage.
The festival is a major test for Indian authorities to showcase Hindu religion, tourism and crowd management.
The vast grounds along the riverbank have been transformed into a vast tent city with over 3,000 kitchens and 150,000 toilets. Divided into 25 sections and spread over 15 square miles, the tent city also includes housing, roads, electricity and water, communications towers, and 11 hospitals. Murals depicting stories from Hindu scriptures are painted on the walls.
Indian Railways has also introduced over 90 special trains, in addition to regular trains, to transport devotees, with around 3,300 flights during the festival period.
Hindu women devotees gather at the confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati rivers to sing hymns on January 12, the day before the 45-day Maha Kumbh festival officially begins in Prayagraj, India. 2025. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia)
Some 50,000 security personnel, an increase of 50% from 2019, are also stationed in the city to maintain law and order and control crowds. More than 2,500 cameras, some equipped with AI, send information on crowd movement and density to four central control rooms, where authorities can quickly deploy personnel to avoid a stampede.
Festival will strengthen PM Modi’s support base
Successive Indian leaders have used the festival to strengthen ties with Hindus, who make up nearly 80% of India’s more than 1.4 billion people. But under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the festival has become an integral part of the defense of Hindu nationalism. For Modi and his party, Indian civilization is inseparable from Hinduism, but critics say the party’s philosophy is rooted in Hindu supremacy.
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Uttar Pradesh, led by Adityanath, an influential Hindu monk and hardline Hindu politician popular within Modi’s party, has earmarked more than $765 million for this year’s event. They also used the festival to boost the image of the two prime ministers, posting giant billboards and posters depicting them across the city with slogans promoting the government’s welfare policies.
The festival is expected to build on the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party’s past record of promoting Hindu cultural symbols as a support base. However, recent Kumbh gatherings have also been mired in controversy.
The Modi government renamed the Mughal-era city from Allahabad to Prayagraj as part of a nationwide effort to change Muslim to Hindu names ahead of the 2019 festival and national elections won by Modi’s party. Changed. In 2021, the Indian government refused to cancel festivals in Haridwar despite a surge in coronavirus cases, fearing a backlash from the Hindu-majority country’s religious leaders.
