Holy Waters and Unholy Politics | Power Play by Anand Mishra

Dear readers,

When religion and politics combine, they form a deadly cocktail. The one-and-a-half-month-long Mahakumbh Mela at Prayagraj began on January 13 and ended on February 26, yet the politics surrounding it continues to ring loud.

With the deaths in three stampede incidents—two in Prayagraj and one at New Delhi Railway Station involving passengers bound for Prayagraj—dominating headlines, the maverick and mercurial Mamata Banerjee took the BJP government to task at both the Centre and in Uttar Pradesh with her “Mrityu Kumbh” jibe, as she questioned the arrangements made for the mega event.

While the government proclaimed that over 66 crore devotees took the holy dip during the much-hyped event, the graphic videos of deaths, injuries, and struggling pilgrims persuaded Prime Minister Narendra Modi to apologise “if arrangements were inadequate”.

But he simultaneously launched a broadside against “a group of leaders who mock and ridicule religion”. Both his claim that “people who hate the Hindu faith have been living in some phase or the other for centuries” and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s use of the word “vultures” for those who he said “only saw dead bodies” during the Mahakumbh seemed to indicate the quasi-official line that the event itself should assume far more importance than the deaths that had occurred during it.

The Kumbh has always been a religious event of enormous significance in India, with lakhs of devotees making a beeline for the Triveni Sangam (confluence of the rivers Ganga, Yamuna, and the mythical Saraswati) during each Kumbh, whether the Ardh Kumbh, the Purna Kumbh, or the Mahakumbh this year. Regardless of the political party in power at the Centre or in Uttar Pradesh, the pilgrimage and the pilgrim spot have always been celebrated as holding a special place in the hearts of all Hindus. But with the BJP in power at the Centre, the Kumbh has become much more than a beloved pilgrimage. The party has successfully converted it into a propaganda tool and created an aura where the party appears to have almost reinvented the Kumbh.

Faced with this publicity blitz, the other political parties are struggling to find an appropriate response. The Rashtriya Janata Dal’s maverick leader Lalu Prasad took the bold decision to question the event’s relevance—dismissively saying: “Kumbh ka koi matlab hai? Faltu hai” (Does the Kumbh have any meaning? It’s useless).

Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Akhilesh Yadav took a more nuanced stance. He had a well-publicised dip in the holy waters but vociferously criticised the arrangements made by the Uttar Pradesh government. His party contrasted the arrangements made by the Adityanath government with those made during the earlier SP government, when party veteran Azam Khan was the Minister in charge in 2013.

This was an interesting point to make because this Kumbh was marred by reports of various right-wing voices demanding that Muslims be kept out of the site altogether. Whereas, as Khan said in a television interview in 2015, a “topi wala” had managed all logistical arrangements, including accommodation for two crore devotees and holy dips in clean water when he was in charge.

Adityanath retorted to this in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly by saying that Akhilesh Yadav had no interest in the Kumbh and so has put a “non-Sanatani” in charge.

In fact, the politics surrounding the Mahakumbh this time resonated even beyond the Hindi belt. In Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde took potshots at former Chief Minister and Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Uddhav Thackeray for not visiting the Mahakumbh, questioning his commitment to Hindutva. Thackeray hit back, saying that the sin of betrayal would not be washed away by taking a dip in the Ganga—referring to Shinde’s defection from the parent party and allying with the BJP to topple the Thackeray government in 2022.

In Tamil Nadu, the ruling DMK, whose scion Udhayanidhi Stalin strongly criticised Sanatan Dharma not so long ago, condemned the Uttar Pradesh government for hiding the number of casualties at the stampede, even as the State’s controversial Governor R.N. Ravi made sure he took a dip in the Triveni.

Rahul Gandhi, expectedly, faced criticism from the BJP for not going for the Mahakumbh snan (dip), a decision that was unexpected but also wise, given how he had fallen into the BJP trap on an earlier occasion and flaunted his janeu (sacred thread). But his party—which has long been attempting to counter the narrative that it neglects Hindu interests and which has not yet been able to create a counter-narrative that balances a powerful support of Hinduism with an equally powerful rejection of Hindutva—rushed into damage control, citing that several Congress leaders had indeed visited Prayagraj and participated in the Mahakumbh. Meanwhile, videos of Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister and Congress leader D.K. Shivakumar taking a holy dip generated considerable attention and speculation.

The Mahakumbh is now over. Whether it has helped the BJP cement some of its shaky hardline Hindutva base in Uttar Pradesh is something only time will tell. The Assembly election is still two years away. But the party—which lost the Faizabad (Ayodhya) Lok Sabha seat in 2024—managed to win the Milkipur Assembly seat earlier this month.

In the 2024 general election, in the Prayagraj region, the BJP lost three of the four Lok Sabha seats. It lost Allahabad, with the Congress winning this prestigious seat after a gap of 40 years. It also lost Kaushambi and Pratapgarh to the Samajwadi Party. It managed to keep only the Phulpur seat.

The BJP clearly hopes that the maha hype around the Mahakumbh will help generate a surge in Hindutva sentiment and help it offset its Lok Sabha losses in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election.

Adityanath’s supporters are also watching his rising stock within the BJP, especially after the recent rumours of his likely deposition and at a time when speculation is rife about who might succeed Modi at the national level.

Did you manage to take a dip in the Sangam this year? Write and tell us what your experience was like. Also, tell us if you would like to see less politics around this special event.

Until then,

Anand Mishra | Political Editor, Frontline

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