Maha Kumbh: A religious gathering with political overtones

As the Sangam (the confluence of Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati rivers) gets ready to receive around 450 million pilgrims at the Maha Kumbh, the biggest gathering of humans in the world, on the sprawling banks of the Ganga at Prayagraj next month, the seers and saffron leaders have also started sharpening their words to reach out to the teeming masses with messages of ‘safeguarding the Sanatana Dharma’ and propping up its ‘saviours’.

Although the ‘Kumbhs’, which, some scholars say, started around 644 BCE, were purely religious gatherings at Prayagraj, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nashik at regular intervals, where the seers and sages took dips in the holy rivers and the devotees meditated and listened to sermons, the politicians of all hues also frequented the event, apparently to connect to the people and reaffirm their commitment to Hinduism.

Right from India’s first Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, almost all the PMs, chief ministers of many states as well as others attended this event, albeit with different agendas.

While some, like former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who took the holy dip in the Sangam waters in the 2001 Maha Kumbh, wanted to counter the Hindutva surge and shun her party’s perceived ‘anti-Hindu’ image, some others sought, at times quite blatantly, to propagate the Hindutva ideology and help strengthen the BJP.

Modi attended the Kumbh Mela in 2019 and took a dip in the Sangam waters in Prayagraj.

Significantly, in the 2019 Kumbh, which was an ‘ardh-kumbh’ organised every six years (Mahakumbhs occur every 12 years), the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) had organised a ‘Dharm Sansad’ (religious parliament), where issues like Ram Temple construction, ‘goraksha’, alleged ‘anti-India’ sentiments in JNU and others were discussed.

Notably, the saint community also voiced its support for a purely economic decision like demonetisation.

The seers had then also appealed to the Hindus to support the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, saying it was necessary to protect the Sanatana Dharma.

Dharm Sansad

The next year’s Mahakumbh will also witness a similar kind of religio-political discourse. Prominent Hindu seers have already declared that a ‘Dharm Sansad’ will be held during the event in which a proposal to set up a ‘Sanatana Board’ on the lines of the Waqf Board to ‘protect’ the temples, mutts and the followers of ‘Sanatana Dharma’ and to wage legal battle to retake the temples, which were demolished and converted into mosques, will be discussed.

The ‘Dharm Sansad’ would be organised by the All India Sanatan Parishad in which the shankaracharyas of the four peethas, all the 13 ‘Akharas’ and prominent seers from across the country would be invited to attend.

“The proposal will be discussed at length at the dharma sansad and the seers will be asked to give their views on the same....the proposal will then be adopted there and thereafter it will be sent to the Centre and the state governments,” Acharya Balkananda Giri, the Mahamandaleshwar of Anand Akhara had said in Prayagraj after a meeting of the seers a few days ago.

The Sanatan Board would also launch a nationwide campaign to check conversions and encourage the preservation of the Sanskrit language, Vedas and Puranas.

‘Ban entry of non-Hindus’

The next year’s Maha Kumbh has already courted controversy with the demand by the seers to ban the entry of ‘non-Hindus’ in the Kumbh Nagar (the tent city) and its adjoining area until the event is over.

The Maha Kumbh and Kumbhs have always been a fertile ground for the propagation of hardcore Hindutva and one can expect fiery speeches by controversial saffron leaders at the ‘Dharm Sansad’.

With the next assembly elections in the politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh only two years away, the Maha Kumbh holds special significance for saffron-clad UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, considered to be the poster boy of hardcore Hindutva.

Adityanath, who also heads the Goraksha Peeth, is likely to visit the event and take a holy dip in the Sangam waters during the Mahakumbh.

Chief Minister Adityanath’s remarks ‘batenge to katenge’ (Hindus will be slaughtered if they are divided), violence against the Hindus in Bangladesh, Shree Krishna Janmabhoomi and Kashi Vishwanath Temple issues are certain to hog the limelight during the Maha Kumbh.

The recent violence in Sambhal, where four persons were killed during a court-ordered survey of a mosque, ‘discovery’ of ‘ancient’ Hindu temples in Muslim-dominated localities in several towns in UP have provided just what the saffron leaders wanted to incite communal passion.

“Sanatana Dharma has always been in the focus at Kumbhs and Maha Kumbhs…the event has always witnessed serious discussions on issues confronting Hinduism. The religious leaders have shown the path to be followed to protect Sanatan Dharma….at times they also have political connotations,” said veteran media analyst J P Shukla.