Latest revision as of 15:56, 31 May 2021

[edit] History

[edit] 2021

Sheo S Jaiswal, April 22, 2021: The Times of India

Amid a raging pandemic, the Maha Kumbh in Haridwar with lakhs in attendance was held after 11 years this time and not the traditional 12 years due to "astrological reasons".

Instead of the 12-year cycle that the Kumbh traditionally follows, the mela was held this year, 11 years after the one in Haridwar in 2010, mainly because of the "favourable astrological position of Sun moving into Aries and Jupiter into Aquarius." One of the organisations involved in taking the decision was Ganga Sabha, the body of priests responsible for upkeep of Har-ki-Pauri at Haridwar, which communicated to the Akhil Bahratiya Akhada Parishad (ABAP), the apex body of akhadas, in January 2019 that the Kumbh should be held in 2021 instead of 2022 due to the astrological configurations.

With the seers' body agreeing to it, a seal of approval was put on the decision by the state government in June 2019 when a mela officer was appointed. However, by next year when the Covid pandemic broke out in the country, there was some reluctance by the then-Trivendra Singh Rawat government to hold the Kumbh in a full-fledged manner. But this was met with resistance from the seers and priests who wanted to hold a "grand event" on the lines of the 2019 Prayagraj Kumbh which the Yogi Adityanath government had organised in UP.

Pradeep Jha, president of the Ganga Sabha, told TOI that as per tradition a specific planetary configuration is essential for the Kumbh Mela to be held at Haridwar. "The auspicious time is when the Sun moves into Aries and Jupiter into Aquarius. This particular configuration happened this year on April 13-14 night," he added. According to Pradeep Joshi, an astrologer formerly with Gurukul Kangri University, Haridwar, "2022 narrowly missed as the Kumbh year." He said: "The Kumbh yoga (auspicious time for Kumbh) could have been in 2022 as Jupiter is to be there in Aquarius till 8 pm on April 13 next year. But Sun will not move into Aries before 8 am the next day. This is the reason that 2022 failed to be the Kumbh year." Like Jha, he also held the opinion that unless the planetary configuration is favourable, Kumbh Mela cannot be held.

Ram Janmabhumi Mandir Tirth Kshetra Nyas general secretary Champat Rai said that invitations for Haridwar Kumbh 2021 were distributed to seers as early as in January 2020 at the Prayagraj Magh mela by Madan Kaushik, Haridwar MLA who was then cabinet minister. "Who could imagine at the time that the dark shadow of a pandemic would loom over the religious event?" Rai said when asked if it would have been wiser to postpone the event. He asserted that "a date cannot arbitrarily be fixed for a Kumbh Mela in violation of age-old tradition."

Incidentally, the state government, under former CM Trivendra Singh Rawat, took measures which clearly indicated that the Kumbh was not going to be organised on a grand scale. Observers say that there were "deliberate" delays made in allotment of land to akhadas in the mela area. No pandals for exhibitions, religious discourses or cultural shows were to be set up. No special trains or buses to ferry pilgrims were also to be run. Notification about the Kumbh period was withheld and the CM reiterated many times that the form and scale of the mela will be determined keeping in view the pandemic.

This allegedly irked the seers, traders, priests and other stakeholders who were hoping for a large turnout during the Kumbh period. Trivendra Rawat was removed on March 9 as the chief minister. One of the first things that his successor Tirath Singh Rawat did after taking over was to meet seers in Haridwar and announce that the Kumbh will be a grand affair "without unnecessary restrictions." He also announced that RT-PCR reports would not be required for coming to the festival even though the Centre had issued SOPs specifying this requirement. The Uttarakhand high court had to subsequently step in to clarify the air regarding proper enforcement of SOPs.

[edit] Pilgrim headcount

Cops: Number of Kumbh pilgrims not downgraded/ The Times of India

The pilgrim headcount of shahi snans was 49 lakh . Sanjay Gunjyal, Inspector General (IG), Kumbh, said, “The three shahi snan days that fell during the notified period of the one-month Kumbh this year saw over 34 lakh people taking a holy dip in Ganga.”

Providing a breakup, he said that

21.2 lakh people bathed in the river on April 12 on Somwati Amavasya,

13.5 lakh on Mesh Sankranti on April 14 and

over 25,000 people on Chaitra Purnima on April 27.

As per official data, endorsed by Kumbh Police, pilgrim footfall was 21.2 lakh on April 12, 4.5 lakh on April 13 and 13.5 lakh on April 14. The mela administration however had claimed soon after the shahi snans that 31 lakh people (not 21.2 lakh) took a dip on April 12.

Commenting on the disparity in figures for the April 12 shahi snan, DGP Ashok Kumar said, “It seems that the figure of 31 lakh released on April 12 was a combined figure of the number of pilgrims gathered in Haridwar on April 10, 11 and 12. However, this would not result in any change in the overall figure of pilgrim headcount released by the government for the Kumbh Mela duration.”