Maha Kumbh blends Tradition with Technology

Biggest Gathering of Humans on Planet

By Kul Bhushan

As the sun rises feebly over the misty horizon, in bone-chilling wind and freezing temperature, clad in minimum clothes, millions of pilgrims took a holy dip in icy-cold waters of the holy Rivers of Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati at Prayagraj, India. Rose petals rained from the sky to welcome them. Over 17 million – repeat over 17 million – pilgrims took the holy dip on 13 January 2025 to start the biggest human gathering on this planet, the Maha Kumbh Mela which can be seen from space.

Maha Kumbh Mela 2025. Pic – ETV Bharat

Maha means great and Kumbh means a pitcher while mela is a fair. This humungous gathering happens every twelve years when the planet Jupiter is in Taurus, and the Sun and Moon are in Capricorn. The Kumbh is held at Prayagraj every twelve years, but this year’s Kumbh is special as it happens after 144 years. If you take this holy dip during this celestial period from 13 January to 26 February, moksha or eternal life is yours, believe the Hindus.

Three Rivers

No wonder 450 million devotees from all across India and many countries are expected to perform this ritual along with saints, sadhus, monks, gurus, singers, artists, scholars, and, of course, tourists.

The entire venue was given a fresh artistic look with ‘wall art’ all over by hundreds of art students and artists depicting religious and environmental themes.

Prayagraj where three holy rivers converge has been upgraded, transformed, beautified, enlarged and digitised with a budget of $813 million. A temporary tent city has sprung up to accommodate the visitors and the saints. Spread over 10,000 acres, the city can accommodate one million guests with increased bathing space on the banks with 30 new pontoon bridges for smooth movement of pilgrims and traffic.

Luxury Tents

In addition to the existing hotels, most visitors stay in tents which start at Rs 1,500 per night for basic tents going up to Rs 100,000 for luxury tents with all modern facilities. Some ‘dome tents’ with a 360-degree view are also available for Rs 125,000 on special bathing days. A few private boats are on offer with a hole in the deck allowing for a private dip!

To reach Maha Kumbh, 13,000 trains and 250 flights have been organised, 100 parking lots for half a million vehicles, 50,000 police force for security, a special mobile app – KumbhSahAIyak with maps plus other information, a FM station for all the latest local news and much more have been created.

All Comforts

Basic amenities like 24-hour power supply, clean drinking water, hygienic toilets, waste treatment, seven layered digital security, solar-powered thematic lighting on major roads with loudspeakers, over 30,000 CCTV cameras and 1,000 AI face recognition cameras, overhead and underwater drones to monitor security, medical care with a fully equipped hospital, clinics and health centres, fire stations, fire-fighting staff and vehicles, lost and found computerized centre, numerous ‘war rooms’ for monitoring crowd movement, traffic and security, expansion of railway stations and airport, parking for 5,000 buses and vehicles, changing tents near bathing areas, around 150,000 smell-free toilets – blue for men and pink for women,10,000 sanitation workers with three primary schools for their children… the list goes on and on. Around $185 million has been earmarked for waste management.

The mastermind behind all this planning and execution is the chief minister of India’s largest state Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, a saffron clad monk, who also heads the spiritual Gorak Nath monastery in Gorakhpur.

Over two dozen global institutions, including Harvard and Stanford, will study Maha Kumbh organization and operations as an event of this scale has never occurred with at least a million daily and an estimated 30 million on its holiest day, 4 February. A total of 450 million people are expected over 45 days. Of course, the media is all over. Major Indian TV channels have set up camp offices for non-stop coverage. Global media, print media, news agencies and most of all social media are all hyperactive. Influencers, vloggers and bloggers are uploading posts and videos going viral.

Business Billions

Maha Kumbh is also a humungous business since it is estimated to generate $23 billion, yes $23 billion. All these millions are also consumers and need at least the basic goods plus some clothing and other items. No wonder the FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) giants are spending millions to produce, transport and promote their products as they gear up for massive sales from street stalls, shops, hotels and restaurants.

No international sports match nor any top rock concert attracts so many people as the Maha Kumbh to which no one is invited and has no tickets. And yet millions turn up on the right days from all across India for thousands of years. The ancient Hindus exactly calculated the movement of the planets since time immemorial. Without the Greenwich or NASA observatory, they accurately calculated the movement of the planets for at least ten thousand years. Kumbh is mentioned in the Rig Ved, the first ancient Hindu scripture and in Mahabharata over 5,000 years ago. The Buddha mentioned it in his discourses 2,500 years ago. The famous Chinese scholar who visited India, Hieu Tsang, during 629-645 AD wrote about it. UNESCO declared it as Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2017.

Big Fight

Its mythical origin can be traced back to the ancient Hindu texts, the Puranas. It is said that the gods and the demons swirled up the ocean as they fought a great battle over a pitcher containing amrit or the elixir for immortality. The gods held the tail of the huge serpent as the demons grabbed the head as they heaved and churned the pitcher or a Kumbh. During this struggle, twelve drops fell out: four in heaven, four in hell and four on the earth at Hardwar, Ujjain, Nasik and Prayagraj. Thus, a Kumbh gathering is held every six years at three venues and every twelve years at Prayagraj. The 2025 gathering is very special as it is happening after 144 years or twelve such gatherings.

Royal Entrance

As per protocol, the gods are believed to take the first dip, followed by the saints and swamis and then everyone else. When the ‘royal’ dips start at dawn, the first of the 13 groups of saints make a grand, ceremonial entrance with the head of the sect riding a colourfully decorated elephant led by brass bands, hundreds of disciples dancing, singing and chanting. These ash-covered sadhus and devotees with sunflowers in their matter hair sway with flags, spears, tridents and swords as flowers rain from bowing spectators. This saffron wave glides towards the banks. The first group of heavily garlanded sadhus is called naga or naked sadhus smeared only with ash. This spectacle gets repeated as twelve other groups make their equally grand entrance to the bathing banks.

The air is filled with loud chants and cries of ‘Har Har Mahadev’ or glory to the great god Shiva, ‘Jai Ganga Maiya’, hail Mother Ganges or ‘Jao Shri Ram’ or hail Lord Ram praises for other gods and goddesses.

Holy Dip

The male pilgrims usually take to dip in a loincloth while the women are fully dressed in saris. When they emerge shivering with cold, the men quickly change into dry clothes on the open-air banks while the women rush to nearby changing rooms for dry clothes. Their top priority now is a steaming cup of hot tea. This is conveniently available on the roadside in all open-air stalls and is eagerly sipped with gratitude.

As they walk on, they are lured by stalls selling trinkets, toys, ornaments, souvenirs and many other attractive goods. But most of them keep walking to one of the thirteen akadhads or religious groups. Here they can hear spiritual discourses, listen to ‘katha’ or spiritual legends, sing devotional songs or volunteer to work in the community kitchen to prepare and serve free meals.

Guru Shopping

Here is the best opportunity for ‘guru shopping’ which means you can listen to different gurus and go back to the one who appeals to you and become his disciple.

There is top-class entertainment too for many renowned singers have been invited to present spiritual concerts. They include popular singers Shanker Mahadevan, Anup Jalota, Kailash Kher, Sonu Nigam, Vishal Bharadwaj, Shreya Ghosh, Richa Sharma, Jubin Nautiyal, plus classical singers. Among top movie stars who are coming include Amitabh Bachchan, Hema Malini, Ashutosh Rana, Ravi Kishan plus well-known poets and authors.

Then there are visitors/tourists from all over the world who have come for a spiritual experience, or just the adventure and thrill of exploring the real India which is on show. Among an expected 50,000 visitors are the young adventurers and serious seekers. The most famous so far is one of the richest women in the world, Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, with a group of 40 friends who first went to Varanasi and was initiated a Hindu with a new name Kamala. Then she came to Prayagraj with her guru for the holy dip and made big news. Hollywood star and Dalai Lama follower Richard Gere is also coming.

Lost Found

With this activity and non-stop action in crowds numbering thousands at every venue, one is bound to get separated from relatives. And Kumbh is notorious for children and seniors getting lost. In fact, many Hindi films show brothers getting separated at Kumbh and finding each other after many years. However, this has been addressed digitally now. The visiting children can wear personalized name tags, lanyards with QR codes, glow-in-the-dark badges and accessories plus Google sharing special landmarks as meeting points to locate the lost with a computerized centre to monitor such incidents. On the first day of Maha Kumbh with 1.7 million people, around 250 went astray but were reunited within an hour!

Eternal Sanatan

Among all these colourful scenes, shrill sounds and hectic activity, there emerges a silent pause to search for the meaning of all this hoopla. This is when the real meaning and purpose of Maha Kumbh becomes clear as Sanatan or eternal. Here is Sanatan to revere the awesome and powerful natural elements and the magic and mystery of life all around.

This Sanatan Dharma or the eternal way of life originated before any religion and has continued down the centuries, surviving all dire challenges and is vibrantly alive today. Many ancient kingdoms, empires and civilisations have come and gone but Sanatan lives today. Wrongly named as Hinduism, Sanatan Dharma is the original name for this way of life as it pulsates in a hundred million followers and in Maha Kumbh now blending technology with tradition. The pilgrims keep coming for once in a lifetime spiritual experience as the Maha Kumbh goes on.

Anand Kul Bhushan is a writer, journalist, UN media consultant and workshop/meditation leader.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 17 January 2025