When unbridled devotion led to disaster: Remembering the 1954 Kumbh Mela stampede

Between 8 and 9 am on February 3, 1954 – on Mauni Amavasya – the crowd control measures at the Kumbh Mela collapsed under immense pressure. Maclean describes how pilgrims continued to pour into an already overcrowded area, straining the narrow, muddy pathways made slick by recent rain. Regulations meant to keep roads and pontoon bridges one-way broke down, turning them into chaotic, two-way thoroughfares. Despite an agreement to halt trains at the Sangam Railway Station, pilgrims continued arriving en masse, she says.

The final trigger for the disaster, she mentions, was a surge of devotees breaking through barriers in an attempt to reach a procession of sadhus and holy men from various akharas. This sudden push caused people at the front to fall over beggars and others squatting in their path. Within minutes, the fallen were trampled.

According to the official inquiry committee report, as cited by Maclean, desperate pilgrims attempting to escape inadvertently ran into the Naga procession of the Mahanirvani Akhara.  “According to the Inquiry Committee’s report, pilgrims with nowhere else to go then made desperate ingressions into the tail end of the stationary procession of the nagas of the Mahanirvani akhara, who turned their trishuls and chimtas against the public in response, and a stampede ensued,” Maclean writes.

She further states how eyewitness accounts described a scene of terror: bodies piled atop one another, pilgrims clambering onto the shoulders of those in front to avoid being trampled, and a sheer lack of space to move. Hundreds died at the scene, their bodies lost beneath the surge of humanity.

The Amrita Bazar Patrika reported that these stampedes reflected “administrative bungling” and warned of further casualties if planning failures continued. A glance at the Kumbh Mela Traffic Plan map, as per Maclean, confirmed the precariousness of the accident site: it was a convergence point of five roads, a ramp, and a pontoon bridge — an accident waiting to happen.

Adding to the chaos was the presence of a high-profile political delegation. Among the dignitaries present on February 3 were then President Rajendra Prasad, then Uttar Pradesh governor K M Munshi, and then chief minister Govind Ballabh Pant. A section of the media later criticised the administration for focusing more on VIP security –  particularly ensuring the President’s ceremonial dip at the Sangam – while neglecting the safety of the masses. The President later visited the injured at the hospital in Kumbh Nagri and issued a condolence statement.

Then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who visited the Mela a day earlier, “paused to dip his hand into the sacred waters of the sangam”, Maclean writes. Nehru later said that VIPs should avoid attending the Mela.

Investigations, cover-ups, and public outrage

In the days following the tragedy, the UP government initiated an inquiry into the Kumbh tragedy and appointed a three-member committee comprising Kamalakant Varma, former Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court; Dr Panna Lal, a former advisor to the UP government; and A C Mitra, then chief engineer of the Irrigation Department. The committee exonerated the government and pinned the blame primarily on the Mahanirvani Akhara.

However, public dissatisfaction with the government’s handling of the disaster led to the formation of an independent Kumbh tragedy ‘fact-finding committee’ by prominent Allahabad citizens.

Maclean notes that the inquiry concluded that “the responsibility for the disaster belongs to the ministers, other important individuals, and the mela authorities. In the committee’s opinion, this incident was not a sudden accident, and people could have been saved from it. … But the authorities did not concentrate on serving the people, but tried to please the ruling party and therefore thousands of innocents died.”

The committee also alleged a government cover-up, arguing that many victims were never identified—especially beggars and widows who had no families to claim their bodies. A photograph published in their report showed decomposed corpses floating downriver weeks after the tragedy, suggesting bodies had been dumped to keep official death tolls low.

While the government’s inquiry admitted to some administrative failures, it dismissed allegations that VIP presence had contributed to the disaster as “pure imagination.” Ironically, Maclean notes that then Union Home Minister Dr K N Katju was praised for bathing at the Sangam humbly, like an “ordinary pilgrim”.

She further observes that during World War II, in 1942, the British government had severely restricted attendance to the Kumbh Mela at Prayagraj, fearing a Japanese attack. Many Indians who had been unable to attend the 1942 Kumbh viewed the 1954 gathering as a rare opportunity to fulfil their spiritual duty, she notes. This, coupled with a newly independent government perceived as more supportive of religious gatherings, resulted in an unprecedented influx of pilgrims, says Maclean.

Authorities failed to anticipate the sheer scale of the event. The disaster was later attributed to a rush of “fanatical” pilgrims seeking to bathe at the most auspicious moment, while other accounts placed the blame on violent sadhus. Maclean argues that the disaster was ultimately caused by a combination of administrative miscalculations, poor crowd control, and infrastructural limitations.

In 1954, it was estimated that one in every 80 Indians attended the Kumbh Mela. Today, attendance has risen, yet little seems to have been learned from history.