Pilgrims gather for Kumbh Mela festival

PRAYAGRAJ: Pilgrims from across the world are gathering in India for the Kumbh Mela – a heady mix of spirituality, politics and tourism – that begins today, garnering extra attention ahead of a general election in the Hindu-majority country this year.

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

“Belief is what brings us here, to bathe in the waters despite the cold,” said Ram Krishna Dwivedi, making his way back from the shore.

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

Today millions of pilgrims, led by naked, ash-smeared ascetics, some of whom live in caves, will plunge themselves into the cold waters during the first Shahi Snan, or Royal Bath, that begins at about 4am (10.30pm GMT).

With fewer than 24 hours until the festival starts, the last of the arriving ascetics paraded towards temporary ashrams, or monasteries, built of corrugated iron and canvas, many bedecked with fairy lights, on the east bank of the Ganges.

Pilgrims poured into the site, which is closed to traffic around bathing days, carrying bundles on their heads, while vendors peddled balloons and candy floss, as security men stood guard, with priests and police seated side-by-side.

This year’s event comes at a critical time for Narendra 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 after eight weeks in March. | Reuters

| AP African News Agency (ANA) HINDU devotees take spiritual cleansing dips at the Sangam, the confluence of the rivers Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati, during the Kumbh Mela festival in Prayagraj, India, yesterday.