People from all walks of life in India are now gathering for the Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, on the banks of the Ganges River where it meets and mixes with the water of the Yamuna and Sarasvati. The Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj, which takes place every 12 years, and is the largest, pulls together multiple strands of India’s deep cultural past and its status today as the second-most populous nation in the world with international influence and ambition to reach for the stars.

Hindu holy men with their bodies smeared with ash stand beside computer programmers ready to wade in. According to tradition that reaches back to the foundations of Hinduism, a ritual dip in the Ganges during Kumbh Mela holds the promise of washing away one’s sins.

“The Kumbh Mela is a living connection to ancient mythology. For a few days it becomes the most populous city in the world where people gather and wade into the Ganges River to be cleansed of their sins, and then it all disperses.” —  Sudipta Sen, professor of history, UC Davis 

Over 400 million people are expected to take part in the Kumbh Mela across the duration of this year’s festivities, which runs from Jan. 13 through Feb. 26 this year.

The Kumbh Mela takes place at five sites total across India at six- and 12-year intervals, but the one every 12 years at Prayagraj is the largest. Prayagraj is the site of a military fort built by the Mughal Empire to protect Hindu pilgrims. Originally, the city was named Allahabad by the Mughal emperor Akbar in the 1500s.

Connecting with India’s deep Hindu past

Sen has written extensively about the history of the Gangetic valley, and how the empire and its Hindu Rajput nobility became some of the greatest patrons of Hinduism. He was born and raised in India to a prominent political family and grew up with stories from Hindu mythology deeply ingrained into his daily life.

Daityas and Devas of Hindu mythology churn the ocean to draw up nectar that will make them immortal. (Wikimedia)

Kumbh means “pot” and mela means “gathering,” so the name of the festival means literally a gathering around a pot. Of course, Sen said, this is no earthly pot. It’s a reference to a heavenly pot — a cornucopia.

As a historian, Sen is at heart a storyteller, and he has his own version of how the Kumbh Mela all began. It begins once upon a time, in the age of truth when the Daityas and Devas — the gods and the demons — struggled against each other for eternal life.

The celestial sea was filled with milk, and they churned this milk to draw up the nectar that would impart immortality. But also coiled up inside the Earth was the eternal snake Vasuki, that caused earthquakes when it stirred.

When the Daityas and Devas first churned the oceans, they didn’t notice that what rose to the surface first was poison. Shiva, the god of destruction, volunteered to drink the poison to save creation. It didn’t kill him, but it turned his throat blue.

When the nectar finally rose, there was an enormous battle. The Daityas ultimately won and became truly eternal. The Devas lost and were condemned.

But during the battle, four drops of the nectar fell to Earth, and those places — Haridwar, Nashik, Prayagraj, and Ujjain — became holy.

“I recall people from my great grandmother's generation who truly believed that such mythical events actually took place,” said Sen.

Faith and cleansing in the Ganges River

The Ganges River is central to the Kumbh Mela’s mythological roots as well as its celebrations today, but the river itself is highly polluted from industry, agriculture and sewage. The Indian government has invested in cleaning it up and have had some success. Recent years have seen the return of the Ganges river dolphin, an endangered species. In one sense, said Sen, this year’s Kumbh Mela can serve as a showcase for some of those cleanups and improvements.

Sen also pointed out that the Ganges Valley surrounding the river is being over-tapped for agricultural irrigation, which has sunk water tables and increased levels of arsenic contamination especially towards the eastern part of the valley. India continues to go through a water crisis that periodically affects the national economy in addition to the general health and wellbeing of the population.

For the Kumbh Mela, there is also the fact of tens of millions of people at a time bathing in the same stretch of the Ganges River. People will be wading in with faith that nothing bad can happen to their health as a result.

“I've seen people very gently brush aside carcasses of dead animals floating in the river,” said Sen. “These are not just poor and uneducated people. They are wearing wristwatches, speaking fluent English, people who could well have been lawyers and scientists. That goes to the abiding faith in the idea that the Ganges water is not just holy but also has medicinal properties.”

Sen wrote about these healing properties in his book Ganges: The Many Pasts of an Indian River (Yale, 2019). Some of this belief in purity has been boosted by research that discovered enormous concentrations of a bacteriophage virus in shallow pools of the Ganges that can consume harmful bacteria like E. coli.

However, the idea of cleanliness is about more than just hygiene, said Sen. He cited ideas from anthropologist Mary Douglas about how we think of dirt as unclean while dirt is the same as the earth on which we live and thrive.

“Hygiene is also an idea” said Sen. “Imagine millions of people living beside garbage dumps in various corners of the world. They live with deadly pathogens, but we have these fixed ideas of the clean and unclean, of the pure and impure as absolutes, while we are also walking concentrations of microbes.”

Drawn to the water by the weight of the past

Sen said that what brings people to the Kumbh Mela more than anything is the weight of the past. It’s also a collective sense of the otherworldly that can help to explain traditions as diverse as decorating a tree brought indoors for Christmas or arranging ofrendas with marigolds and photos of passed loved ones for Día de Los Muertos.

“The weight of the mythic past is palpable,” said Sen. “We just mirror it.”

He also pointed out that humans are complicated in their beliefs. Faith in science can stand side-by-side with religious faith. This is especially true when it comes to how we handle death. While most people might want to die with medical care and medicine that provides relief from pain or the hope of recovery, at the end people want to put the mortal coil behind them and take control over their death.

For Hindus, Sen said, Ganges water is key to that.

“Millions of millions of people have died with a drop of Ganges water on their lips,” said Sen. “It gives you the promise of salvation.”