150 million at festival

Pilgrims from across the world are gathering in India for the Kumbh Mela, a heady mix of spirituality, politics and tourism that begins on Tuesday, garnering extra attention ahead of a general election in the Hindumajority country in 2019.

During the eight-week festival at Prayagraj in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, authorities expect up to 150 million people, including a million foreign visitors, to bathe at the confluence of the Ganges, the Yamuna, and mythical third river Saraswati.

Devout Hindus believe that bathing in the waters of the Ganges absolves people of sins and bathing at the time of the Kumbh Mela, or the “festival of the pot”, brings salvation from the cycle of life and death.

More than 80% of India’s 1.3 billion people are Hindus, despite an increasingly Westernised middle class.

Authorities have set up temporary bridges, 600 mass kitchens and more than 100,000 portable toilets in a pop-up city in the area.

This year’s event comes at a critical time for Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), expected to face a tough contest in a general election due by May.

Modi and his rival, opposition Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, are both expected to attend the festival before it wraps up in March. –