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Journalism of Courage
On November 1, 1858, a grand durbar was organised at Allahabad in what is today known as Malaviya Park. The Viceroy, Lord Canning, read out the historic proclamation of the Queen which would end the 250-year rule of the East India Company, and thereby transfer the government directly to the Crown. One crucial aspect of the proclamation was the promise that henceforth there would be no interference on religious matters on the part of the government, and that Indians would retain their autonomy on the practice of the religion.
Although Canning’s speech was attended by only a few Indians, the implications of what he said were surely not lost upon them. Allahabad-born freedom fighter and educationist Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, whose politics was closely tied to religion, labelled the Queen’s Proclamation to be a Magna Carta. The site of the proclamation had its significance too, Allahabad would soon become a major centre of politics and religious gatherings, including the Maha Kumbh which is hosted every 12 years.
There is a widely held belief that the Kumbh Mela is an ancient religious gathering, or rather it is ageless. Historian Kama Maclean, who is a leading authority on the history of the Kumbh Mela, has suggested in her works that this very idea of timelessness is what gives a sense of sanctity to the Mela in the eyes of its followers. Maclean is among a group of historians who suggest that the present character of the Kumbh Mela — held at Prayagraj, Haridwar, Nashik and Ujjain every 12 years — is a recent development that can be dated back to the late 19th or early 20th century.
James Lochtefeld in his work, The Construction of the Kumbh Mela (2004), writes that the earliest references to the Kumbh Mela would make it clear that the name was only associated with the mela at Haridwar. In an interview with indianexpress.com he says that “this mela’s timing is astrologically determined.” “Haridwar is the only place where the Kumbh rashi (Aquarius) is the determining factor,” he says, explaining the origins of the name.
Lochtefeld also cites two texts, one written in 1695 and another in 1759, which state that only the Haridwar mela was specifically called ‘Kumbh’. These texts explicitly describe other festivals now identified with the Kumbh Mela cycle – the Magh Mela in Prayagraj and the Simhastha Mela in Nashik and Ujjain. These other pilgrimage festivals, while also important, were unconnected with the Haridwar Kumbh Mela.
It is only much later that the different festivals in the four cities came to be identified with the Kumbh Mela. Maclean in her book, Pilgrimage and Power: The Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, 1765-1954 (2008), argues that the Prayag Kumbh Mela began only from the latter half of the 1800s and was instituted by the Prayagwals who were local pilgrimage priests. This was a way for them to concentrate pilgrim traffic for longer periods than the annual Magh Mela. “The Prayagwals basically wanted to bulletproof their festival in the face of terrible retribution by the British. They wanted this larger connection to give the Magh Mela even greater religious authorit, and thus make it more difficult to cancel,” says Lochtefeld.
Lochtefeld argues that the akhadas (traditional groups of Hindu ascetics that participate in the Kumbh Mela) were the main players who were involved in creating a nexus of these four cities through the Kumbh Mela. “With the decline of Mughal power in the 1700s and a power vacuum being created in North India, the akhadas emerged as powerful forces,” he says. “They had money and land and carried out trade, much of which happened at these festivals.”
The akhadas used their powerful networks to coalesce at this period and first establish themselves through the Kumbh Mela at Haridwar, Allahabad and Nashik. Ujjain was added to this nexus later. It is the mela at Prayagraj or Allahabad though that emerged as the largest, a stature it continues to hold.
Maclean in her work explains the position of significance that Allahabad acquired in the years following the 1857 revolt. After the devastation at Agra, the capital of the North-Western provinces was relocated to Allahabad. The city was planned and rezoned to make it safe for the European population. By the late 19th century, Allahabad was no longer referred to as a ‘mofussil’ and was instead given the epithet of the ‘Queen of the North’. The city “was considered to be the most extensive and successful example of formal planning in British India,” notes historian J B Harrison in his article ‘Four Gridirons’ (1986).
Allahabad became a seat of government and public life. A High Court was established in 1867, the Muir Central College in 1877 and the Allahabad University in 1887. The city would soon come to be inhabited by a thriving student population, who along with the existing influential Indian families and the Prayagwals, would form the local roots of the early Indian National Congress. “This political nexus was to have significant consequences for the Allahabad Mela,” writes Maclean.
From the late 19th century onwards, the Allahabad Kumbh Mela would become a platform for staging nationalist sentiments through religious activities. “Part of this was because of the British government’s policy of not interfering with religious affairs. So religion became a theatre for nationalist activities,” says Lochtefeld. He gives the example of the Ganesh Chaturthi which became a nationalist festival in the 1890s. The Kumbh too began to carry out a similar function.
One of the first changes to affect the Kumbh Mela was the emergence of an influential Hindu ‘lobby’ that wanted to create a space within the colonial state where Indian political sovereignty was respected. “In the hands of this lobby, the festival began to change, as these early nationalists argued in sophisticated terms that religious rites had become rights,” writes Maclean. Consequently, the mela’s character began changing from an syncretic, eclectic kind to one that conformed to the notions of a “Hindu religious festival”.
One aspect of this change was in the kind of products that were put up for sale in the fair. In the early part of the 19th century, the mela attracted luxury products from as far as Persia. British travel writer Fanny Parks noted the presence of pearls, semi-precious stones, bows and arrows, sable and dresses, and Persian and Arabic books in the mela of the 1830s. Contrarily, from the latter part of the century, devotional goods including trinkets, tracts, religious paraphernalia, idols of Hindu gods and goddesses, puja supplies and the like began appearing.
At the same time, the presence of non-Hindus was increasingly tolerated less. As Maclean notes, Muslim barbers doing ‘mundan’ or selling flowers and other paraphernalia, or simply attending the fair, which was common earlier, was now disliked. Similarly, there were frequent complaints against the missionaries preaching colonial propaganda at the site, a phenomenon that had been common in the last several decades.
From the beginning of the 20th century, the Kumbh Melas became a site where nationalist ideas were disseminated. “As nationalism developed, the hub of politics emanating from Allahabad’s notables, such as Motilal Nehru, Madan Mohan Malaviya and Purushottam Das Tandon, gave it a national reputation, giving the pilgrimage an extra dimension,” writes Maclean.
The pilgrimage manuals from the early 20th century onwards, for example, began suggesting pilgrims to also visit the secular sites of Allahabad, such as Minto Park (later known as Malaviya Park) and Anand Bhavan, home of Motilal Nehru.
Jawaharlal Nehru in his writings had mentioned about pilgrims, who after taking a bath at the Sangam, would often visit the Bharadwaj Ashram, across his home. “Curiosity, I suppose, brought most of them, and the desire to see well known persons they had heard of, especially my father. Our political slogans they knew well, and all day the house resounded with them,” he wrote.
Historian William Gould in his book Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India (2004) notes that the Congress leaders in the course of the 20th century would make direct use of the religious festivals and religious spaces “during processions and political meetings.” At the Magh Mela and the Kumbh Mela, he writes, the “Congress had established permanent camps.”
During the 1907 mela, for instance, there were reports of Hindu ascetics preaching swadeshi and nationalism. The local press of the time had published its approval of this development as a task befitting sadhus as exemplars of the nation, writes Maclean.
The 1907 mela was also attended by nationalist Bal Gangadhar Tilak, causing much apprehension among the British authorities, who were conscious of the political furore created by his Ganapati festivals. Tilak’s meeting at Allahabad was attended by a small group of eager students, who went about communicating the message of swadeshi to the pilgrims on the mela ground. His visit was soon followed by that of the moderate leader Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Both leaders’ presence at Kumbh was part of their efforts to propagate their respective parties’ positions with regard to the national movement. When Tilak passed away a few years later in 1920, his ashes were brought to Allahabad where they were immersed in the Sangam during a ceremony that was attended by his colleagues, including Motilal Nehru. The poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan, who was present at the event, is known to have commented about the ceremony as being almost a pilgrimage.
By the 1930s, the mela was being used actively by the Congress to spread the message of civil disobedience. Gould in his book writes that at the Kumbh and the Magh Melas of the opening weeks of 1930, sanyasis played a leading role in turning the festivities into political rallies. On January 13, fifteen sanyasis held a procession where they sang a national song at the Haridwar mela. A similar procession, accompanied by a national flag, was carried out on the same day in Allahabad. Meanwhile, pamphlets were circulated by the Arya Samaj leader Swami Parmanand asking people to abstain from intoxicants and foreign-produced goods. The calls of the sanyasis, suggests Gould, “knitted Congress policy with religious sanctions.”
Maclean observes that one of the greatest statements of political mobilisation was found in the 1936 Ardh Kumbh Mela. The Swadeshi League had displayed an idol of Bharat Mata at their camp which was attended by a large number of visitors. In what would appear as a counter, the British authorities displayed a large figure of a sadhu on a high platform, fitted in with a loudspeaker.
While the Kumbh was used to convey political messaging, Lochtefeld explains that it was “political in the larger sense” as it was not just limited to the views of different organisations or parties but also carried larger socio-cultural messages. During the 1930 mela, for instance, the British government spread knowledge about the Sarda Marriage Act (1929) that penalised the marriage of girls below the age of 14 and boys under 16.
As recently as 1998, recalls Lochtefeld, he came across an old man carrying around anti-dowry signs during the ascetic processions at the Kumbh Mela in Haridwar. In the same mela, he also came across booths spreading information on agriculture as well as street plays promoting vaccinations for children. The Kumbh, he suggests, has been a theatre for social change. “If there is any group trying to seek recognition, or any problem that deserves attention, Kumbh provides an opportunity to engage with a large audience,” Lochtefeld says
Further reading:
James G. Lochtefeld, The Construction of the Kumbh Mela, South Asian Popular Culture, 2004
Kama Maclean, Pilgrimage and Power: The Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, 1765-1954, Oxford University Press, 2008
William Gould, Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India, Cambridge University Press, 2004
