PRAYAGRAJ, India – Millions of Hindu devotees, mystics and holy men and women from across India flocked to the northern city of Prayagraj on Monday to begin the Maha Kumbh festival, which is considered the world's largest religious gathering.
For about 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, hoping to begin a journey to reach the ultimate goal of Hindu philosophy: liberation from the cycle of rebirth.
Here's what you need to know about the festival:
A religious circle where three sacred rivers meet
Hindus worship rivers, and none more so than the Ganges and Yamuna. The faithful believe that immersion in water will cleanse them of their past sins and complete their process of rebirth, especially on auspicious days. The best of these dates occur in 12-year cycles during a festival called the Maha Kumbh Mela, or festival of pots.
The festival is a series of ritual baths performed by Hindu sadhus, or holy men, and other pilgrims at the confluence of three sacred rivers dating back at least to ancient times. Hindus believe that the mythical river Saraswati once flowed from the Himalayas through Prayagraj, where it meets the Ganges and Yamuna.
Bathing takes place every day, but on the most auspicious days, naked, ash-smeared monks wade into the sacred rivers in the morning. Many pilgrims stay throughout this festival, observing the auspiciousness, giving alms and bathing in the sunrise every day.
“We feel peaceful here and attain salvation from the cycles of life and death,” said Bhagwat Prasad Tiwari, a pilgrim.
This festival originates from the Hindu tradition that the god Vishnu snatched a golden pot containing the nectar of immortality from the demons. Hindus believe that a few drops fell on the cities of Prayagraj, Nasik, Ujjain and Haridwar—four places where the Kumbh festival has been held for centuries.
The Kumbh rotates between these four pilgrimage sites approximately every three years on a day determined by astrology. This year's festival is bigger and bigger than ever. A smaller version of the festival, called the Ardh Kumbh, or Half Kumbh, was organized in 2019, drawing 240 million visitors, about 50 million taking a ritual bath on the busiest day.
The 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 in Prayagraj over the next 45 days, according to officials. That's 200 times more than the two million pilgrims who arrived in the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia for the annual Hajj pilgrimage last year.
The festival is a major test for Indian authorities to showcase Hinduism, tourism and crowd management.
The vast riverside area has been transformed into a sprawling tent city with over 3,000 kitchens and 150,000 toilets. Divided into 25 sections and spread over an area of 40 square kilometers (15 square miles), the tent city has houses, roads, electricity and water, telecommunication towers and 11 hospitals. Murals depicting stories from Hindu scriptures are painted on the walls of the city.
Indian Railways has also introduced more than 90 special trains that will make nearly 3,300 trips during the festival to transport devotees, apart from regular trains.
About 50,000 security personnel—a 50% increase from 2019—are stationed in the city to maintain law and order and manage crowds. More than 2,500 2,500 cameras, some powered by AI, will send crowd movement and congestion data to four central control rooms, where officials can quickly dispatch personnel to avoid crowding.
The festival will boost Modi's support base
Indian leaders have used the festival to strengthen their ties with the country's Hindus, who make up about 80% of India's more than 1.4 billion people. But under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the festival has become an important part of promoting Hindu nationalism. For Modi and his party, Indian civilization is inseparable from Hinduism, although critics say the party's philosophy is based on Hindu supremacy.
The state of Uttar Pradesh, led by Adityanath – a powerful Hindu monk and a staunch Hindu politician in Modi's party – has allocated more than $765 million for this year's event. It also used the celebration to promote its image and that of the prime minister, with large billboards and posters across the city featuring both, and slogans promoting their government's social policies.
The festival is expected to boost the ruling Hindu party Bharatiya Janata Party's record of promoting Hindu cultural symbols with its support base. But recent Kumbh gatherings have also been mired in controversy.
Modi's government changed the Mughal-era city's name from Allahabad to Prayagraj as part of an effort to change names from Muslims to Hindus across the country ahead of the 2019 festival and general elections won by his party. In 2021, his government refused to hold the festival in Haridwar despite the rise in coronavirus cases, fearing a backlash from religious leaders in the Hindu-majority country.
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