From Kumbh to Mahakumbh | Radhakanta Barik

The jammed roads to the Kumbh religious conclave on the eve of ’Mahashivaratri’ explains the state of politics in India. Tax concessions to the upper middle class pushed them to have double dips: one in the Triveni and another in a hotel room. They have to protect themselves from disease. They will sell their vehicle and buy one from Trump’s nominee, Musk, who is establishing his car plant in India or importing the vehicles from the factory in China. They will leave Modi behind to join the ranks of Trump as their children are in America. If a religious event gets organized with the support of the state and it creates madness among local elites of Northern India and they come and congregate to take bath in the Kumbh and it is branded as the Mahakumbh and it turns into a manufactured religious event and the advertisments speak out that it is an event of unity with pictures of Narendra Modi and Yogi Adityanath. This creates fear in each sensible person that knowingly the event ends on Shivaratri day. Are they going to create a situation like Ram Mandir frenzy and they know the story of Shiva in Kashi and are they going to create another Rathyatra to push up Yogi as the ’Mahabhakt’ which looks like a theatre but it may create another stage of madness which would create riots in each city of North India and West India and by creating riots they may go for unity. Yogi government has already announced to send Ganga water to each district of UP to create a riotious situation.

According to scholars, there is no concept of Moksha, and the idea that going to Prayagraj to have a holy dip can cleanse the sins is an absurd idea in Hinduism. Furthermore, there is no text of ancient literature about any Mahakumb after 144 years, which needs to be probed further. The state can help in arranging for the pilgrims to attend the Kumba, but the state has no place to take pride in celebrating a religious festival. On all three grounds, the behaviour of Modi and Yogi is wrong according to the religious texts of Hinduism. Modi, in his article in Indian Express at the end of Mahakumb Mela, says that it is going to usher in “New India” (IE, February 28, 2025). The same day, the stock exchange almost collapsed, which was unexpected.

Yogi Adityanath using pigs and vultures to those who are speaking against Mahakumb has very casteist and communal connotations. With the breakdown of the caste system, the pigs stand for revolutionary changes in rural society. In the rural society of Odisha today, the high castes are rearing pigs for making good money. Some of them amassed a good amount of money and decided to participate in Panchayati Raj elections as Sarapanch candidates. Talking to a Brahmin priest who says that doing puja like a beggar but by rearing of goat, pigs and sheep make him a prosperous person. Each year, he earns lakhs of rupees. The high castes have joined hands in creating cooperatives and rearing these animals. Economic change and social change are happening simultaneously. Vultures used to be birds of the capital city of Delhi but slowly vanished and now the state has created special package for saving vultures from extinction. Vultures have totemic value for the Parsee community, whose religion is constitutionally recognized, and it is hurtful to the sentiments of a religious group. Yogi needs to withdraw these words, which have a casteist and communal meaning.

Three social scientists went for a study of the behaviour of pilgrims of Kumbh and found that it was a part of popular culture. Mostly, people from UP and nearby came to take a dip in the river, and they came in buses and took a dip and have ’Chaatu’ [Sattu] with gur and go back. They offer a little rice to the priests sitting there and the Naga-babas and monks sitting in their huts. It was an anthropological experience for us, and they carried their religiosity with them without hypocrisy.

The leaders of Hindutva brought it to an elite level where members of the elite came to attend the Kumba mela, but the powerful went in a separate lane and enjoyed their dip. Film stars, industrialists and ruling party members and their supporters came to a separate ghat to have a dip. In the process, they ignored the common men and their religiosity. They infused showbiz, which can be explained by the advertisement where Modi and Yogi were standing together inviting people of India to attend the kumbh as unity of Indian civilisation and the day thousand and five hundred people started missing, the elite removed the ad from Delhi knowing well that it would backfire. This explains why the elite culture is getting imposed on common people having economic strength and social hierarchy.

The Andhbhakts face a serious conflict between their beliefs and the real hard work needed for reaching the destination. A group of ten planned to reach Kumbh by hiring an agent, and he found there was no train from Odisha to Prayagraj, and they first went to Ranchi and from Ranchi to their destination via Banaras. From Banaras they went by reserved vehicles which took ten hours and coming back to it the same time. They missed the train from Banaras to Ranchi, and they had to book another train and had to stay in a hotel. Reaching Ranchi, they missed their original train and booked in another train to Cuttack. It was seven days’ work, and they invested a lakha of rupees, and they suffer now from fatigue and exhaustion. Reaching homes first thing, they decided to forego their bhakta identity, and they feel it is a disastrous path and expensive and money-consuming. Sufferings and body aches made them reflect on their faith in Ganga snan.

Kumbh brought the upper middle class to join the ranks of industrialists supported by Modi, and their public sector companies have been sold to Adani. They keep him as an ideal as he was allowed to do unethical and illegal activities in the economic field. With a dip in the river Ganga, they like to rise like Adani with the blessings of Modi. Here, religion and economic mobility have been combined. Here the best example is Priety Zinta, the Diva who went for a dip in Ganga and found that her payment of 15 crore as income Tax has allegedly been exempted. This means that one dip is worth Rs 15 lakhs.

Yogi tells of the false premises on which Hinduism stands that having good sense and bad sense make people suffer accordingly. By tradition people visit to a religious place with a deep feeling and they cannot be branded like this.
Naipal argues in his novel in opposition to Indria Gandhi’s anti-poverty package as against the Hinduism. Poverty is the product of crime committed in the previous life for which they suffer in the present life. This is absurd, but Yogi is using similar language after so many years. Hinduism accepts rationalism, which helps in improving the quality of life. So many people who died are not at fault; the fault lies with the Organisers who could have suspended the VIP treatment in a separate lane. This is being discussed by the retired police officer BB Ray, who was in charge of the management of Kumbh. He went to the then-chief minister of UP N D Tiwari and told him that there should be no such thing as VIP passes in the organization. This is the basic principle of a modern organization which wants to respect each employee without creating a hierarchy. As Hindutva believes in social hierarchy, they maintain it. Furthermore, for making money they have arranged. The rich come in planes, with expensive airfare, spend hours in jammed roads and walk fifteen kilometers to the ghat. This is a poor management principle which divides people. This is one of the reasons for deaths at the Ghat, and it is calculated by the leading newspaper Dainnik Bhaskar that 1500 people have been missing. In Delhi, a train platform stampede killed around 15 people. Prime Minister Modi could have expressed his condolences about their souls, but no mention of any stampede was made, and there was just a general statement regarding difficulties faced by the pilgrims

Science has been ignored by ignoring the warning of the India Green Tribunal regarding the poor quality of water in the river Ganga, which has caused skin diseases. Yogi ignored, claiming that the Ganga has a self cleaning capacity and it is drinkable water. Science and rationality have been ignored by both Modi and Yogi.