Nearly a million Hindu pilgrims braved unseasonally cold weather to bathe in the holy River Ganges yesterday on the opening day of a three-month festival said to be the biggest religious gathering in the world.
More than 50 million people are expected to attend the Kumbh Mela, or Pitcher Festival, in the northern city of Haridwar to cleanse their sins and break the cycle of life and rebirth.
The world’s next largest religious gathering is Islam’s Haj pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, which attracts up to three million people annually.
Hindus from across India have been pouring into Haridwar — a temple town in the northern state of Uttarakhand — to take part in the festival, which alternates between four Indian cities.
Starting at sunrise yesterday, a vast crowd began chanting hymns and immersing themselves in the river’s sacred but highly polluted waters.
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Many of them filled cans and bottles with water to take to relatives who were unable to attend. “Your soul will be cleansed and you will be free from disease if you take such a bath during this period,” Sushant Raj, an astrologist, said as he emerged from the river. “The water is cleaner and has more natural power in the early morning.”
Pilot Baba, a Hindu monk with thousands of followers in many countries, said that the festival showcased the best of Indian spiritualism. “Kumbh is the soul of Indian culture,” he said as many devotees bowed before him in respect. “Kumbh gives us an opportunity to connect with the world, to be a progressive nation.”
Several thousand police and paramilitary forces, equipped with CCTV cameras and metal detectors, were also in attendance to guard against another militant attack like the one in Mumbai last year.
One soldier and two suspected militants were killed yesterday in a battle between security forces and suspected Islamic insurgents in the Indian portion of Kashmir, about 250 miles north of Haridwar. Police believe that the suspects were members of Hezb-ul-Mujahidin, Kashmir’s largest rebel group.
The security forces in Haridwar also tried to enforce orderly queues to the bathing areas, anxious to prevent the kind of stampede that so often blights religious festivals in India.
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At least seven pilgrims, including one child, were crushed to death and 17 were injured in a stampede at a separate harvest festival in the eastern state of West Bengal yesterday.
The stampede occurred as thousands of pilgrims rushed for places on a ferry to take them to a site on an island south of Calcutta where the Ganges flows into the Bay of Bengal.
The first day of the Kumbh Mela appeared to have passed peacefully, according to organisers who made unprecedented efforts to prepare for the huge crowds. They have provided 15,000 makeshift lavatories, 10,000 cleaners and hundreds of green, blue and brown tents spread across a vast 80-square-mile area, according to Chandra Shekhar Bhatt, one the festival organisers.
Also in the crowd were hundreds of naked, ash-covered Naga sadhus — Hindu holy men who usually live in isolation in mountains, caves or communes and gather in public only at the Kumbh Mela.
Soham Baba, considered the leader of the Nagas, told reporters that they planned to use the festival to highlight global warming.
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“Sadhus like us who go up to the higher reaches of the Himalayas to meditate have a clear picture of how bad the situation is,” he said. “Pristine lakes and waterfalls that existed till a few years ago have dried up.”
The Kumbh Mela commemorates a mythical battle between gods and demons over a pitcher of the nectar of immortality.
During the battle, a few drops of nectar fell in four different places: Haridwar, Allahabad, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, Ujjain in the central state of Madhya Pradesh and Nasik in central Maharashtra.
The festival alternates between the four places every three years, and an even larger Maha Kumbh Mela is held once every 12 years. The next will be in Allahabad in 2013.