High above the millions of Hindu pilgrims walking around the grounds of Kumbh Mela Maha, Prime Minister Narendra Modi from India is descending from giant Panoa and posters how much the eye can see. Otherwise, at night there are cuts of leaders, glittering size, with their hands folded in greeting.
Maha Kumbh, a spiritual festival, which is widely considered the greatest gathering of humanity, is being held this year in the town of Moyagraj, where the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers meet. Hindus believe that their third, mythical river was called Saraswati. The burning bhakta is being dug with holy waters in the belief that they will be made by sins and approve of their salvation.
It’s a mesmerizing spectacle. There are monks ash, naked ascetic, priests with Vermilion paste at the forefront, ordinary pilgrims, tourists with selfie sticks, foreigners who are in fear, entertainers, entertainers, small suppliers and great advertisers. It is also an urban planning feat, a megalopolis built overnight on a land borrowed from Ganges withdrawing in the state of Uttar Pradesh, with tents, toilets, roads, street lamps, and even automated automatics for sale of tickets.
For Mr. Modi and his close ally Yogi Adityanath, a hard Hindu monk who is Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Maha Kumbh provides a marketing opportunity as any other. It is a platform for showing Indian achievements – and therefore theirs – before the terrible citizenship and the world they are looking at.
The political sensitivity of the event was visible last week when 30 pilgrims died and 90 were injured in Stamped, according to official numbers. Mr. Adityanath seemed to have tried minimize an episodeAs it took him almost 15 hours to admit that people had died and provided the number of deaths.
Mr. Modi expressed sadness and offered help, but otherwise he stayed at a distance from the tragic news. For him, Kumbh is an important opportunity to advertise as a man who will turn India into a good, effective, effective, technical and business heavyweight category.
The positive picture of the festival also helps Mr. Modi, a Hindu nationalist, to satisfy the desire among his right -wing base for promoting the famous Hindu cultural and religious past.
Mr. Modi “is someone who mixed religion and politics, religion and state,” said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, an author who followed the rise of the Hindu right because he sought to eradicate the secular foundation established by the Indian Constitution.
Strangely aware of the importance of the image, Mr. Modi improved his power by projecting himself not only as a political leader, but also as a guardian of Hindu tradition. He is both the Prime Minister and “Chief Priest of Hinduism throughout the country” who performs rituals known to many Hindus in public environments, said Mr. Mukhopadhyay.
The Mr. Modi is expected to take his holy bump on Wednesday in Kumbh’s MAH, the same day when the capital of New Delhi holds regional elections. The media in the spotlight that day will spill out his party Bharatiya Janana as they compete in the election.
Mr. Adityanath was equally active in seeking a political advantage from a spiritual event.
Last month, Mr. Adityanath, who was sometimes seen as a potential heir to Mr. Modi, held a special meeting of cabinet for the Moyagraj State Ministers. There they announced infrastructure projects and bathed on the mouth of the river – another sign, said Mr. Mukhopadhyay, about more blurred lines between religion and state.
A week later, after Stampede, Mr. Adityanath worked at the end of the disaster, as he showed the power of rescue operations Maha Kumbha.
Kumbh Mela and other ritual swimming of events have existed for centuries. The Hindu legend believes that the gods and demons fought over the launch, or the “kumbh”, nectar immortality, the gods spilled drops in four places – every Indian city that holds Kumbh Mela every 12 years.
For decades, the festival has mostly monitored the various command of Hindu monks. But the governments have long been helpers, ensuring that the events are neat and safe.
The Kumbh Mela Festivals have increased constantly over the decades, from the total presence of several million people to hundreds of millions, as better infrastructure and objects have attracted several pilgrims.
The central and state governments have allocated hundreds of millions of dollars for this year’s event, called the Maha Kumbh Maha, or the “great” KUBH, because it coincides with the rare celestial alignment of the last 144 years. The festival started in mid -January and will end at the end of this month.
Government’s involvement is inevitable given the huge pilgrimage, but “People do not come to Mela -and because the government advertises or promotes it,” said Diana L. Eck, Professor Emerita of the Harvard Divinex School who worked on a 2015 Study Called, “Kumbh: Maping the Epiring Mega City.”
Still, Mr. Adityanath has largely embarked on this year’s festival as a tourist event, and the KUMBH “Experience” packages, luxury tents and efforts to attract celebrity guests. As he did the affair guided by PR, some participants said he had been distracted from the essence of the festival.
“Politicians should do politics and the saints should do their religious job,” said Narender Kumar Sahoo, a pilgrim from Madhya Pradesh, who runs a food product trade in his village.
Stampede also led to the criticism of the opposition parties that the courtship of the rich and influential participants of Mr. Adityanath came under the cost of arrangements for ordinary pilgrims.
Amanda Lucia, a professor at the Department of Study of Religion at the University of California, attended Kumbh Mela repeatedly. Dr. Lucia recalled that she was stunned during her first visit to a smaller version of Kumbha in 1997, boarding a crowded train from the Indian city of Varanasi to Molagraj, where she was forced to sit under the sink for about a three -hour trip.
The promotion of events, both in the country and globally, increased significantly after Mr. Modi came to power in 2014, said Dr. Lucia. In 2019, months before Mr. Modi was elected to another term, he and Mr. Adityanaanath upgraded the “half” of Kumbh Mela, who appears every six years in the so -called full Kumbh, which was to win support for his campaign.
“There were many people called” Government Kumbh “and complaining that the overly political plot had fallen into the event, said Dr. Lucia.
One of the main changes to this year’s Kumbha is his difficult marketing as a cultural and development showcase – the “biggest show on Earth” for Hinduism – not as a religious event. The state pointed out that the revenues of the festival trade will add to official coffers.
Mr. Adityanath’s government has woken up with a devotee by showering them with rose petals lowered from a helicopter. Billboards and Digital shows the trumpets of government investment in infrastructure. Officials share endless data points, including the number of swimmers and foreign tourists, feeding HYPE.
State Government posters were advertised by the Maha Kumbh as “Divine, Great, Digital”-a modern turnaround for a country that sees itself as a model of domestic high-tech innovation.
Digital technology has made it easier for people to find their way around a temporary city. QR codes provide ties to the hotel, food, ambulance and the management of Mela. Situated among these bids is a code with a link to the “State Government’s achievements”.
Officials have said they use sophisticated technology launched by artificial intelligence for the supervision and management of the crowd. At the lost and founded workers, they used facial recognition technology to follow missing people.
Private companies have been supplied with artificial intelligence software that can record certain information such as the number of people taking the holy swollen in a particular hour, said Ashok Gupta, a police inspector who oversees an integrated command and control center.
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However, for many millions of pilgrims, the miracle of Kumbh Mela Maha is neither political nor organizational.
Dharmendra Dubey, 28, walked for miles to the mouth of the river, reaching the water after the dark. As he had lunch after the fall, trembling as the temperature hit the low 50s, Mr. Dubey, who works at a private bank, said he felt energy.
Despite a long walk, he said he could get into cold water again.
“No fatigue now,” Mr. Dubay said. “She won’t.”
