Nirvana on the Ganga

Confluence is the key word. And not just because an estimated 70 million from various parts of the country and the world would have visited the confluence of the three rivers of the Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati by the time the mahakumbh mela winds to a close in late February. The event, currently happening in Allahabad, showcases the melding of the terrestrial with the celestial, the ancient with the modern, the spiritual ardour of many an ordinary Indian with the spiritual curiosity of many a Western celebrity. Ultimately, one person’s soul food becomes another person’s spectacle in this the global village, in this the age of instant communications, in this the era of instant nirvanas. Even the gods and their worshippers cannot escape, it seems, the profoundly transformative potential of mobile phones, satellite television and the Internet.

Plotting change on the graph of history reveals interesting glimpses for the intrepid documentalist of social behaviour. Imagine, in 1989 the scene of the last kumbh mela at Allahabad Bill Gates had not quite opened his Windows for business, Al Gore hadn’t as yet invented the Internet (even if there’s agreement that it is indeed he who did!) and the mobile phone was still only a prop in Star Trek. Today, just 11 years down the line, everything has undergone a sea change and nothing quite embodies this transformation than the sight of a saffron-clad sadhu talking into his Nokia or sophisticated aerial cameras beaming images of the madding crowds and tented townships spread over some 1,300 ha on the Ganga’s banks to TV stations in Toronto and Tel Aviv. Not all this change can be accepted with equanimity. Eleven years ago, the Ganga was certainly less polluted. Today, even sadhus who ostensibly believe in the pristine purity of the river are driven to imbibe bottled water instead of Ganga jal!

In 1989, the mahakumbh had attracted 15 million people and it was enough for the Guinness Book of World Records to describe it as the ‘‘largest gathering of human beings for a single purpose.’’ On Wednesday, an estimated 2.5 million took the holy dip to mark paush purnima and even more are expected to converge on Sunday, makar sankranti day, for the shahi snan. Are there words to describe such an event? Can pedestrian record-noting, of the kind that Guinness excels in, capture the sheer magnitude of it? Even as we recognise this, there are some rather more terrestrial aspects that need to be ensured to secure the mahakumbh. The first, of course, is the physical safety of the pilgrims. Fears of strikes by Kashmiri militants aside, there is the ever-present danger of bridge collapses and stampedes when numbers of such a magnitude have to be accommodated. This needs more than the presence of an estimated 20,000 policemen who are currently on duty at Allahabad, it requires nothing less than constant monitoring offacilities and regulation of crowds. Participating in the mahakumbh and bathing in the waters of the Ganga in sub-zero temperatures may be an act of faith for the ordinary pilgrim. For the administrator, however, that cannot be the case.