James G. Lochtefeld THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE KUMBHA MELA Hindu religious tradition is often portrayed as established and unchanging by its adherents as well as outside observers. Each of these groups can have good reasons to assert this, for , it reflects the conviction that their religious practices are rooted in antiquity, whereas for (polemical) outsiders it is evidence for the lack of any meaningful progress. Yet these assumptions ill explain the workings of any religious community – which not only constantly changes in response to its times, but also finds ways to clothe these changes in the garb of tradition. Both of these phenomena can be seen in the Kumbha Mela, a Hindu festival that is widely believed to be the world’s largest religious gathering. The Kumbha Mela’s tone and content have been profoundly altered in the recent past, spurred by changing social, economic, and political conditions. As the real-life Kumbha Mela has been ‘constructed’ through this process of change, one sees the corresponding ‘construction’ of the sources (textual, mythical, and historical) to provide it with its roots, location, and raison d’être. These ‘constructed’ sources root the Kumbha Mela in the distant past, both to give it the authority of antiquity and to portray the festival as unchanging, but these new sources reflect these new forces. These forces have transformed the Kumbha Mela from a theater for ascetic military power into a government-controlled mass religious festival, and this government control is now being challenged by Hindu nationalists. The constant feature throughout the festival’s history has been the way it has served as a stage on which groups can enact and contest for authority. Although each Kumbha Mela attracts millions of pilgrims, this festival’s primary actors are the ascetic bands known as akhara s.5 At each Kumbha Mela’s holiest moments, these akhara s have exclusive rights to the most important bathing places, which are closed to the public. The akhara s process to these bathing places in festive processions known as shahi snan s (‘royal baths’), in which they bear weapons, banners, and accoutrements of royal authority. Although these processions are now highly scripted, before 1800 each akhara ’s position in the bathing order reflected its actual status vis-à-vis the others. Bathing at the holiest moment was thus the visible sign of an akhara ’s primacy, and the procession to this bath enacted that primacy. Historical sources suggest that such claims to primacy were contested, and that disagreements over bathing order led to bloody struggles.6 Since the early 1800s, the Mela authorities – first British, and later Indian – have maintained the established bathing order, freezing into custom and privilege what had once been claimed solely by force of arms. Yet even though these authorities have played an increasingly important role, the akhara s are clearly still the Kumbha Mela’s primary ritual agents. Since at one time this ritual agency reflected actual power, it seems likely that the akhara s have always played a pivotal role in this festival. Aside from highlighting various akhara s’ prestige, the Kumbha Mela also draws ascetics from throughout the nation. Such large gatherings are an opportunity to gain exposure, patronage, and prestige; they provide a showcase for any ascetic seeking a wider audience, as well as for a host of religious, social service, and political organizations. The Mela arrangements are carried out by their respective state governments (Uttaranchal, , Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra), which take on the responsibility for the massive infrastructure – transportation, drinking water, food shops, medical care, and sanitary arrangements – that will serve millions of pilgrims. In recent times, the government has used the Mela to promote its own agenda – including such goals as family planning and cleaning up the – as well as promoting the Mela as religious tourism, to spur economic development. As the Kumbha Mela has gained international significance, it not only reflects the currents of popular Indian culture, but has also become a powerful stage to try to transform that culture, particularly by Hindu nationalist groups.

Page 1 of 6 Given the Kumbha Mela’s contemporary importance and the cultivated disdain for novelty in Hindu culture, it is not surprising that contemporary Hindus ascribe the Kumbha Mela’s origins to the remote past. This reflects the assumption of many Hindus that the bedrock of their culture is ageless, timeless, and unchanging, and that contemporary practices have been handed down from the sages in the distant past. Given its current importance, it is most surprising that sources for the Kumbha Mela are so sparse; critical consideration of these sources shows that the Kumbha Mela is not nearly as old as most people would assume, and that the festival’s tone and emphasis have changed dramatically even in the past century. As the Kumbha Mela’s tradition and history have been formed, these have helped to promote people’s wish to participate in it – thereby hinting at the impact mythmaking has upon popular culture. As with most Hindu religious festivals, the Kumbha Mela has a charter myth, which not only describes how the festival began, but also accounts for its more unusual features, such as celebrating a single festival in four different places, the celestial formulae for determining them, and the mythic ties connecting these contemporary practices to a long-ago event. As we shall also see, the uncertain provenance of this charter is also emblematic of the Kumbha Mela’s history. According to contemporary sources, the charter’s basis is the story of ’s Tortoise Avatar, which appears in many of the purana s.7 In most versions, the story begins with the sage Durvasas becoming angry with the gods and cursing them to be subject to death. To counteract this curse, the gods needed to churn the Sea of Milk to obtain the nectar of immortality ( amrta ). Since the gods could not perform this task alone, they made a pact with the demons ( ) to churn the Ocean of Milk together, and to divide the amrta equally between them. Vishnu himself took the form of a tortoise and dove to the bottom of the ocean, to provide a stable base for the churningstick, Mount Mandara. As soon as the amrta appeared, the agreement between the two parties broke down. The s grabbed the pot of amrta and began to escape, but Vishnu took the form of the enchanting maiden Mohini, and beguiled the demons into giving the pot back to her. She gave the pot to the gods, who took off with the asura s in hot pursuit. The gods’ flight lasted twelve (divine) days, during which they set the pot down at one place on each day. Eight of these places were in the heavens, and four were on earth – Prayag, Hardwar, Ujjain, and Nasik. In each place a bit of the amrta splashed on the ground, sanctifying the site. Since a divine day is considered equal to a human year, their twelve-day flight established the current twelve-year cycle. The gods finally managed to escape their pursuers and divided the nectar among themselves, but failed to notice that the asura Sainhikeya had slipped into their midst in disguise. As the Sainhikeya began to drink, the sun and moon alerted Vishnu, who used his discus to cut off the asura ’s head. The sun and moon were rewarded for their alertness in safeguarding the amrta by having their positions help to determine the Kumbha Mela’s timing.8 Jupiter’s primacy in determining the Mela’s timing reflects the belief that Jupiter was the religious preceptor ( guru ) to the gods, and thus the most important celestial body. Most importantly, this story also connects the present with the events in this inconceivably distant past. At each Kumbha Mela’s most propitious moment, the rivers are said to turn back into the nectar of immortality, and those who bathe in them gain immeasurable religious merit. The charter’s core story – churning the ocean of milk – is quite well attested. This is the tale of Vishnu’s Tortoise Avatar, which according to Bedekar appears in at least seven purana s, as well as the and the . Yet as Bhattacharya (5) and Amado (1114–5) have noted, the part of this story giving the charter for the Kumbha Mela itself – namely, the gods’ flight for the twelve divine days, and sanctifying the four spots on earth – does not appear in the Mahabharata , the Ramayana , or any of the published purana s. Further lacunae are found P.V. Kane’s History of Dharmasastra, and in the medieval nibandha (commentarial) literature. Kane’s text gives only the briefest reference to the Kumbha Mela (5.287), while the commentators are silent both on the charter myth, and on the Kumbha Mela itself.9 Since both Kane and the nibandha commentators write voluminously on the religious literature, these elisions strongly suggest that it does not appear in these sources.

Page 2 of 6 Why is the charter myth for such a well-known festival apparently absent from all the smrti literature, as well as the later commentarial literature? Given the Kumbha Mela’s contemporary prominence, this absence is striking and unexpected. The simplest explanation is that Kumbha Mela was not an important festival when these texts were being composed, if it existed at all. As it became a popular cultural practice over time, the Kumbha Mela needed a charter to give it mythic sanction, and the latter part of the story – the part that fixes the Kumbha Mela – was grafted onto the well-known story of the Tortoise Avatar. Given the Kumbha Mela’s contemporary importance, it is surprising to find that its current charter myth can be traced back only to about a hundred years. This gulf between claims and documentation is mirrored in the Mela’s history, in which rich claims and assumptions are belied by surprisingly sparse data. The most grandiose claims assert that the Kumbha Mela has been taking place from time immemorial, whereas others link its origin to the philosopher Shankaracharya (780–812?). Other claims seek to strengthen its antiquity by connecting it to the (whose antiquity is unquestionable), or by associating it with historical figures such as Hsuan Tsang, Vallabhacharya, and Chaitanya. In fact, none of these claims stand up to scrutiny. The Kumbha Mela cannot have existed since time immemorial, because the zodiac determines the Mela’s timing, and the first Sanskrit references to the zodiac are in Varahamihira’s Brhatjataka , in the 6 th century (Mule 3, Kane 5.484). Not only is the Kumbha Mela not mentioned in the Vedas – as Pandit Ram Shankar Bhattacharya succinctly notes – but it is also absent from the purana s, the commentarial ( nibandha ) literature based on the , or even in the Haridvaramahatmya , the earlier of Hardwar’s two mahatmya traditions. Finally, historical investigation belies all of the claims connecting the Kumbha Mela with historical figures: Hsuan Tsang, Vallabhacarya, Chaitanya, and Shankaracharya. In fact, the earliest attested mention of the term ‘Kumbha Mela’ comes in the Khulasatu-t-Tawarikh , a Moghul-era gazetteer that was probably written in 1695. The text gives a general account of the empire’s various regions, including the following description of the Ganges: Although according to the holy books the river Ganges should be worshipped from its origin to its end, yet is described as the greatest of all holy places on its banks. Every year, on the day when the sun enters the sign of Aries – which is called Baisakhi – people from every side assemble here. Especially in the year when Jupiter enters the sign of Aquarius (otherwise named Kumbh ) – which happens once every 12 years – vast numbers of people assemble here from remote distances. They consider bathing, giving alms, and shaving the hair and beard at this place, as acts of merit, and the throwing of the bones of the dead into the Ganges [as the means of] salvation of the deceased (Sarkar a: 19; the italics are in the original). A similar attestation is found in the Chahar Gulshan , a comparable gazetteer whose initial composition Sarkar dates to 1759, but for which the final editing was done in 1789 (a: xv). The Chahar Gulshan opens by describing northern India, particularly the holy places and religious festivals of the Hindus in the Delhi region. Among these festivals, it mentions: Mela at Haridwar in Baisakh: the largest gathering takes place in the year in which Jupiter enters the sign of Aquarius, and is called the . Lacs of laymen, Faqirs, and Sanyasis assemble here. If any Faqirs of Prag [or Bairagi?] come here, they are attacked by the Sanyasis (Sarkar a: 124; the italics are in the original). These two brief descriptions give several consistent facts. Both call this festival the Kumbha Mela, both describe the astrological phenomena still associated with the Hardwar festival (i.e. the sun entering Aries when Jupiter is in Aquarius), both point to Jupiter’s astrological position as the reason for this festival’s name, and both describe the Kumbha Mela as an enhanced version of the annual Baisakhi festival. The Khulasatu explicitly mentions alms giving as one of the festival practices – indicating that this was an opportunity for patronage – whereas the Chahar Gulshan mentions that sanyasi s assembled there. Furthermore, both texts use the name Kumbha Mela only for the Hardwar festival, even though these texts

Page 3 of 6 explicitly describe other festivals now identified as part of the Kumbha Mela cycle – namely, the Magh Mela in Prayag, and the Simhastha Mela in Nasik.17 The texts clearly show that these others are important festivals, but neither is connected to the Hardwar Mela. The Kumbha Melas at Hardwar, Prayag, and Nasik grew out of established festivals, whose trade and patronage opportunities naturally attracted the akharas . According to a volume published for Ujjain’s 1992 Kumbha Mela, the festival came there Ujjain by royal initiative: In 1740 AD, when the founder of the Shinde Dynasty, Ranoji Shinde was ruling in Malwa with his headquarters in Ujjain, it was decided that it was the stateresponsibility to provide facilities to the pilgrims. Simultaneously, the sadhus of the Dashanami, Udasina, Natha, Vaishnavite and Saivite faiths were invited from Nasik to take part in the holy dips and to grace the occasion. If this account is true, then the Ujjain Kumbha Mela is essentially an extension of the existing Nasik Mela. This story explains why both Kumbha Melas are celebrated when Jupiter is in Leo – Madhoji invited the sadhus to Ujjain when they were already ‘in the neighbourhood’ for the Simhastha fair in Nasik.20 Another bit of evidence supporting this story is that all the akhara s bathe at the same time in Ujjain, whereas in the other places one akhara bathes before the others, as a sign of their local pre-eminence. Simultaneous bathing hints that some outside authority (i.e. Shinde) was in charge of this festival, rather than the akharas themselves. In summary, the historical sources for the Kumbha Mela are much sparser than its present importance would lead one to believe, and the Mela’s charter myth seems to be of dubious antiquity. What then is certain? There is clear evidence of wellestablished bathing festivals by 1700. Some were annual festivals – in the spring at Hardwar, which is historically attested to about 1600, 21 and during Magh at Prayag, which has a much longer history.22 There were also festivals tied to Jupiter, and thus on a twelve-year cycle – the Kumbha Mela in Hardwar, and the Sinhastha Mela in Nasik. The Nasik Mela’s origins are clearly independent from the Hardwar Mela’s, since it had a separate charter myth even in the late 19th century, as discussed above. Astrological evidence supports Hardwar as the original Kumbha Mela site, since it is the only one in which Aquarius determines the festival’s timing. These bare facts raise intriguing questions. One cluster of questions centres on the ‘original’ Kumbha Mela, at Hardwar – when and how did it begin? How and why did it become so important that it became a model overlaid on other existing festivals, namely the Magh Mela at Prayag, and the Simhastha Mela at Nasik? Yet the more compelling question concerns the construction of the modern ‘Kumbha Mela’ – how does one get from these individual festivals, only one of which is called the Kumbha Mela, to this unified set of four (for which a charter myth would assuredly be generated) The contemporary Kumbha Mela – four places, one festival, and a unifying charter – did not arise until the late 19th or the early 20th century. Around the turn of the 20th century these four different festivals, each patronized by the akhara s, had been transformed into one festival linked by a single charter. Although the akhara s’ presence may have spurred this process, I seriously doubt that they wrote this unifying charter, or even cared about such matters. Their presence at these festivals was about maintaining their status, patronage, and power. The forces responsible for ‘constructing’ one festival from these four lie in other, deeper social currents, to which the Kumbha Mela’s ongoing changes bear clear witness in attendance patterns, theme, calendar, and organization. At the cusp of the twentieth century, the Kumbha Mela’s tone, structure, and attendance patterns were profoundly transformed. One significant shift has been the phenomenal growth of the Prayag Kumbha Mela, which is now by far the largest – perhaps because it has greater festival space, or perhaps because of its

Page 4 of 6 location in the densely populated Gangetic plain. Yet until the end of the 19th century, the Hardwar Mela consistently drew much larger crowds; from 1796 to 1867, the estimated crowds on the primary bathing day topped two million.33 The accuracy of these estimates can be disputed, but these numbers are much larger than those at Prayag, which drew 218,732 pilgrims for the entire year in 1812–13, and the 1812 fair had drawn the largest numbers for 28 years (Hamilton 1.35). It was not until 1894 that the crowd for the Kumbh day at Prayag was estimated at over a million people ( Imperial Gazetteer of India, hereafter IGI, a: 5.239) At least in Hardwar, the Kumbha Mela’s focus had sharply changed by 1927. In the 19th century the focus was religious and mercantile, whereas in the early 20 th century the mercantile emphasis had been replaced by a stress on nationalism, in which these festival venues served as arenas to contest for control with the colonial government. Hardwar was a vibrant centre for such activity, and the larger support for this movement can be seen in the flood of construction between 1927 and 1938 – indicating substantial patronage – as well as the substantial enlargements and improvements to the central bathing ghat at Har-ki- Pairi. As this sense of unified purpose emerged – as well as organisations such as the All-India Sewa Samiti, which did volunteer work at different Kumbha Melas – it would have been natural for people to begin to conceive of the Kumbha Mela festivals not as four separate things, but as four examples of one thing, and for a unifying charter myth to state this explicitly. The Gauda text, which gives the earliest published charter for a unified set of four pilgrimage places, appears in 1947 (v.s. 2004). Many contemporary sources ascribe the Kumbha Mela’s origin to the philosopher Shankaracharya (780– 812?). According to this story, Shankara established this festival to combat the spread of Buddhism and to reinvigorate Hindu religious life, by initiating regular gatherings of learned and holy men. Despite its contemporary popular appeal, this story is just that – a fiction. One problem is that the story does not appear until the twentieth century, another is that it also presupposes the sort of unified festival that the Kumbha Mela has only recently become. Yet another issue is the incongruity between Shankara’s ascetic ‘style’ and that of the naga ascetics who were and are the Kumbha Mela’s primary actors (Madhava-vidyaranya 67, 137–43, 176–9).43 The truth of the Shankara story lies not in its content, but its underlying meaning – the language of struggle versus outsiders, and of worries about a threatened Hindu identity. The concerns in the story show strong parallels with those of Hindus in the early 20th century, who saw Hindu identity threatened politically by the colonial government, threatened religiously by Christian missionaries, and who tried to organize the community to struggle against it. As in the story of Shankara, using public religious gatherings proved to be the perfect strategy, because such gatherings were the sole venue for ‘nationalist’ sentiments with which the colonial government would not interfere. Beginning with Ranoji Shinde, the Kumbha Mela has also been an important stage to demonstrate political authority. Shinde’s support for the Ujjain Kumbha Mela bolstered his status as a pious Hindu king, and highlighted his renascent Hindu kingdom. British efforts to preserve order and to uphold sanitary arrangements reinforced their claim to govern for the benefit of the governed, and thus helped to justify the colonial enterprise (Prior 38–9).46 These same tendencies have clearly been evident in independent India. Although Nehru was not religious, he had a highly visible presence at the 1954 Kumbha Mela – the first in the newly formed republic – because he recognized the festival’s high symbolic value, and successive governments have claimed the status which comes with running the Mela. This status brings heavy responsibilities, since the government is blamed for any breakdown in the arrangements, especially those involving loss of life.47 For individual politicians, an appearance at the Kumbha Mela is a way to demonstrate one’s piety, and to bolster one’s political capital with the Hindu electorate. Political figures from throughout North India regularly attend the Kumbha Mela, and these considerations were most likely behind Sonia Gandhi’s highly publicised bath at Prayag in 2001. The government-controlled exhibits also carry a ‘political’ agenda, by helping to advance various goals. Such goals can include encouraging scientific agronomy and pest control, highlighting health issues such as

Page 5 of 6 safe drinking water, childhood immunization, and AIDS awareness, promoting the state’s industry and tourism, and endorsing social goals such as population control, women’s literacy, opposition to child marriage and untouchability, and ‘national integration’. The farming, health, and development information is usually transmitted via displays in the exhibit halls, but the social messages are more commonly conveyed through street theatre. This medium presents these messages far more forcibly than a static display, and at the same time engages the audience with everyday language and broad humour. It is clearly a pan-Hindu religious festival, it draws enormous crowds, the central religious act – bathing in a sacred river – is clearly non-sectarian, and it generates immense media coverage. In its current state, the Kumbh is simply far too big for any pressure group to control, or for any cultural group to influence. Most of these millions come as individuals or small groups, and for their own reasons: to spend time with a guru, to meet with the assembled ‘saints’, to bathe in the holy rivers, or simply to be a part of this great human gathering. The festival continues to develop into an international event, which will transform it into an even more contested stage.

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