THE KUMBH MAHAMUDDLE
As the day of the last shahi snan (royal bath) of the Haridwar Mahakumbh Mela approaches on April 27, the crowds in Haridwar have thinned quite dramatically. Following the surge in Covid-19 cases, several akhadas (congregations) of seers have departed the festival grounds. For instance, of the 13 Bairagi akhadas—for whom the last shahi snan day is considered most significant—only six remain on site.
By April 18, about 80 seers at various ashrams had tested positive for Covid-19. On April 14, Swami Kapil Dev, the mahamandaleshwar of Madhya Pradesh’s Maha Nirvani Akhada, succumbed to Covid-19. Mahant Narendra Giri, president of the Akhil Bharatiya Akhada Parishad, has been admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Rishikesh. VHP working president Alok Kumar has also tested positive. Between the Maha Shivratri snan on March 11 and April 20, 8,251 people had tested positive for the coronavirus in Haridwar.
While the state had earlier announced that it was mandatory for devotees to have negative RT-PCR reports and medical certificates to get e-passes to enter the Haridwar Mela grounds, this was an order more honoured in the breach than in the observance. Top officials in the Uttarakhand government claim more than 4,000 vehicles, with occupants found to be
Covid-positive, were turned back at state border points or from entering Haridwar between April 1 and 10. The 8,000+ people who had tested positive in Haridwar up to April 20 suggest a different reality, as do the 31,516 new cases across the state. The big spikes in Covid+ve numbers have occurred as the month’s second shahi snan on April 12 drew near—about 5,500 of Haridwar’s cases were recorded after April 10, and about 24,000 of the state’s overall Covid surge. On April 12 and 14, the second and third of the four shahi snan days, an estimated total of 2.6 million pilgrims and seers took holy dips in the Ganga at Haridwar. The state had earlier planned for six million daily visitors to the Maha Kumbh Mela; this was later reduced to about 1.25 million. (In comparison, Haridwar saw perhaps 12.6 million devotees at the Makar Sankranti snan in 2010.)
Another feature of the problem is the millions of pilgrims who have returned to their homes and communities already. Some are likely infected and will infect others. This has the potential to add massively to India’s Covid-19 caseload, which crossed 14 million cases in midApril, with nearly 250,000 new infections reported on April 17 alone. Many states, including Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan, have made it mandatory for returning pilgrims to be tested and quarantined, but these are huge enforcement challenges, similar to Uttarakhand’s negative RT-PCR requirement. After the nationwide furore over permissions being granted to such superspreader event— with millions in close proximity at the Maha Kumbh Mela—Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to the influential Swami Avdheshanand Giri, chief of the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha, requesting him to convince the other seers to conduct the rest of the Kumbh as a symbolic celebration.
However, people close to Uttarakhand chief minister Tirath Singh Rawat continue to rubbish the evidence that the Maha Kumbh has been a superspreader event. “This is propaganda, we can prove it with statistics,” says a top functionary in the Uttarakhand regime, refusing to be named. While couching its worries and reservations in an ‘appeal’ from Prime Minister Modi, the Centre has at least looked less in denial. Not in denial but still keen to deflect, Union Home Minister Amit Shah admitted public behaviour at the Kumbh Mela site was not Covid-appropriate, but drew attention in the same breath to similarly indiscreet behaviour during Ramzan. Since then, the Uttarakhand
government has been attempting to scale down the swelling crowds in Haridwar, with RSS affiliate Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) also beginning conversations with akhadas to cut down on congregation sizes. This was followed by some akhadas—the Panch Dashnam Joona, the largest, and the Niranjani, Anand, Avahan, Agni and Kinnar akhadas—leaving the Mela.
Top officials in Uttarakhand say the administration has opened new testing camps and has been random-testing people at various ashrams in Haridwar and Rishikesh. Since April 1, more than 10,000 tests have been conducted every day, with a maximum of about 32,000 on April 14. This means only about 60,000 of the 2.6 million people who visited Haridwar over April 12 and April 14—the Somvati Amavasya and Makar Sakranti snans—were tested for
the virus. Many thousands of infected people were likely missed.
In terms of the challenge of policing such a huge event, shahi snans take place at various ghats stretching across 18 km of land. The Maha Kumbh Mela celebrations cover an area of roughly 25 sq. km. “But this is an open area, not a closed one, and there is flowing water for people to take a dip,” the state’s top cop, Ashok Kumar, said. He says 2,000 additional beds were added in local hospitals for the Maha Kumbh Mela, and that all those who have tested positive have been either isolated in facilities in Haridwar or Rishikesh or shifted to local hospitals. Downplaying the rise in cases, he says, “We have to compare the statistics to the national figures.”
The stance taken by Prime Minister Modi and the statement issued by home minister Shah have left the state administration and the recently appointed chief minister Tirath Singh Rawat redfaced. Rawat, who took over on March 11, had sought to use the Maha Kumbh Mela to forge links with the communities of seers and religious leaders that make up the Melas. In mid-March, he had travelled to Haridwar to review the planning for a smooth execution of the festival. (On his return to the state capital, he too tested positive.) And on April 20, the Uttarakhand High Court, while hearing PILs on the state’s handling of the pandemic, questioned the preparations for the upcoming Char Dham Yatra in mid-May, saying it could not be “allowed to turn into another Kumbh.”
Before he left office, former Chief Minister Trivendra Rawat had earned the intense ire of religious outfits and their leaders for a legislative attempt to take control of the Char Dham temples (Gangotri, Yamunotri, Badrinath and Kedarnath). Coming into power, new Chief Minister Tirath Rawat promised religious leaders he would ‘free their temples’ from state control and play a supportive role. Making good on his word, he pushed to showcase the Maha Kumbh to boost attendance, with fullpage advertisements in national dailies, radio jingles and other means. Now, the state is scrambling to identify the potentially thousands of new Covid cases among the millions of pilgrims who recently travelled to Haridwar or Rishikesh. Each one missed is an infected person carrying the virus back to their home communities, where more people could be infected.
This year, in acknowledgement of the dangers of the pandemic, the celebrations had been shortened to under two months, beginning on Shivratri (March 11) and going on till April 30. Traditionally, the Maha Kumbh Mela, conducted once every roughly 12 years in four locations, takes place over about four months in each location, from mid-January to April. While Haridwar’s numbers were clearly a huge pandemic risk—2.6 million over two shahi snan days alone, for instance—they were just a fraction of the tens of millions who might have visited. All told, the Centre and state had spent over Rs 1,200 crore on infrastructure and support facilities during the Mela. Even in its curtailed form, one estimate had them looking to earn Rs 4,500-5,000 crore back.
Maha Kumbh Melas are perhaps the largest religious gathering in the world. They are central to the Hindu religious calendar and are a pivotal moment in the lives of many devout Hindus.
In less than a year from now, Uttarakhand will go to the polls for assembly elections. This was a significant moment for a chief minister who only got the job on March 11. Even discounting for the sentiments of devout Hindus, public memory is likely to be unsparing of the government’s management of this Maha Kumbh Mela, more specifically the way it was allowed to become a superspreader event and a calamitous national risk. Chief Minister Tirath Singh Rawat’s dangerously optimistic insistence that the festival and celebrations continue without any rok-tok (restraint) might extract too heavy a political price.
ON APRIL 12 AND 14—SOMVATI AMAVASYA AND MAKAR SANKRANTI— ABOUT 2.6 MILLION PILGRIMS PARTICIPATED IN THE