Crowds on the Move: Kumbh Mela (2), Haridwar, India (Archives)

Much of the world is currently in lock-down, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and the inadvisability of being in small spaces with large numbers of people. I currently have two lots of travel insurance – and travel plans – that are functionally worthless as countries spiral into panic and wonder how their already-stretched health systems will cope.

So, as Australia locks its borders and limits gatherings to less than ten people, I can’t help but think back to a time when I was part of one of the largest masses of human movement on the planet: a Kumbh Mela in India.

The Kumbh Mela (or Kumbha Mela) is a Hindu religious festival that is celebrated four times every 12 years. The tradition is attributed to the 8th-century Indian philosopher Shankara who wanted religious ascetics and holy men to meet for periodic discussion and debate. The location rotates around four pilgrimage places on four sacred rivers: Haridwar on the Ganges River, Ujjain on the Shipra, Nashik on the Godavari, and Prayag (Allahabad) at the confluence of the Ganges, the Yamuna (Jamuna), and the mythical Sarasvati. 

The sacredness of these four locations is rooted in ancient Hindu texts, particularly the samudra manthana (Sanskrit: समुद्रमन्थन, churning of the ocean). Long before our time, gods and demons fought continuously over the pot (kumbha) of amrita, the elixir of immortality that is produced by their joint churning up of the milky ocean of creation. In the course of their struggle, drops of the elixir fell on those four earthly sites. When the Sun, the Moon, and Jupiter line up over the respective sites, the associated rivers turn back into that primordial nectar, giving pilgrims the chance to bathe in the essence of purity, auspiciousness, and immortality.

So, the pilgrims come – they come from all over, carrying kumbhs (water pots) or other containers to carry water from the sacred rivers home with them. They come on foot. They come by tuk tuk or bicycle or car. They come by train – as we did when I attended the 2010 Kumbh Mela in Haridwar with photographers Gavin Gough and Matt Brandon. (Being piled into an over-night second-class rail carriage across India gave me plenty of stories to tell, but is not an experience I would repeat or recommend.) For days, they keep coming.

The dates of the mela are determined by the Holy men, who measure the astrological positions for the site whose mela it will be: the holiest time is the exact moment when the Sun, the Moon, and Jupiter, are fully aligned. On April 14th 2010 – the day after these particular pictures were taken – approximately 10 million people bathed in the Ganga Mata (Mother Ganges) in Haridwar.

This is not the first time I’ve returned to this old set of photo-files (see: Faces in the Crowd), but digging through the archives and dusting off some of the pictures I made of the exuberantly smiling faces during this mass-gathering seemed like a good way of making lemonade out the lemons the world is currently throwing at us.

Enjoy!

Such a crush of humanity!

And, for the most part, a happy and positive crowd. There was an episode the following day where five people were killed in a stampede; while that is – of course – tragic, given the millions of people present, the odds were still good.

Better than the odds that we seem to be confronting at the moment as we face down an invisible viral foe in social isolation.

I wish you well however you are riding out the next months.

Namaste!

Photos: 13April2010