Road to Kumbh: Paved With Hindu Rashtra Intentions?

Whether Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will be able to recover his image after the tragedy at Mahakumbh, which officially killed more than 30 people and wounded many, many more, is a question being raised in hushed voices in the corridors of power in Delhi.

Obviously, questions are also being raised about the great hiatus between the massive propaganda undertaken around the Mahakumbh and the level of preparations for this 'biggest congregation on earth'.

WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MASSIVE TRAGEDY?

For Chief Minister Adityanath, who had 'positioned himself as the 'host of the biggest congregation on earth', the path ahead looks challenging, with the tremendous ineptness of the administration led by him on full display. Much has been reported about conscious attempts made allegedly to downplay the tragedy and how it continued for the whole day. A UP minister, supposed to be close to the Chief Minister, even made a controversial statement that “such small events keep happening in large gatherings.” The statement caused so much uproar that he had to issue an apology. The mainstream media added another page of shame to its track record when it continued to publish government handouts, and did not even deem it necessary to report the tragedy.

Reports reveal that it took around 18 hours for the UP administration to officially acknowledge the deaths during the stampede, which had occurred in the wee hours of Wednesday, January 29, 2025. It is also said that if tweets by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah had not appeared about the 'holy souls' who lost their lives in the tragedy at Kumbh, Yogi and his administration would have taken a few more hours to acknowledge these deaths.

What added insult to the injury of the devotees is that the Chief Minister, instead of being self-reflexive at the moment, when the VIP culture promoted in the Mahakumbh was increasingly being blamed for worsening the tragedy, appeared to put the blame on the devotees themselves for this tragedy, after having crowed for days about unprecedented security arrangements.

Could it be said that such a massive tragedy was waiting to happen, because there were enough indications that the ruling dispensation had neither thought holistically about the massive numbers of people who would be gathering on various 'auspicious occasions', thanks to the massive propaganda undertaken by it through national media and elsewhere about this Mahakumbh? Or could it had not drawn necessary lessons of crowd management based on earlier experiences?

Less than six months ago, a village in Hathras district of the state had witnessed a stampede that led to deaths of more than 121 people, mostly women and children, and injuries to hundreds at a gathering for a satsang led by a self-styled Baba, where 2.5 lakh devotees had gathered when the permission was given only for 60,000 people. This man-made tragedy should have been a wake-up call for the Yogi administration, when it had already started the propaganda for the Mahakumbh. Clearly, that did not happen.

As of now, nothing definitive can be said about the happenings and only a detailed independent and impartial enquiry can throw light on how the tragedy took place. Of course, the shameful manner in which attempts were made to downplay the tragedy and the way the inept Yogi-led administration was forced to suspend VIP movement, and the way a , leading Hindi media organisation (Dainik Bhaskar) January 30, 2025 even pointed out the names of a few officials who precipitated the tragedy. This gives enough indications about who was responsible for these deaths. 

PROMOTING VIP CULTURE, NEGLECTING DEVOTEES?

Take the question of VIP movement, which has been suspended after the tragedy.

The special treatment given to VIPs, for whom a separate lane was cleared to reach the Sangam by car, had added to the torment faced by devotees who had to walk for several kilometers, without any means of communication available. Despite continued complaints by them, this arrangement was allowed to continue uninterrupted.

It was callousness of the extreme kind when a government, which had started believing the mythology peddled by it -- about it being Vishwa Guru -- perceived it to be infallible. 

The only rationale behind the free run to the VIP movement was that it provided photo opportunities to the 'Chief Host' of the congregation, his cabinet colleagues and friends and the embedded media, to share glossy stories about the “foolproof arrangements” at the congregation.

Despite tomtomming the “unprecedented” security arrangements focusing on the devotees, it is now crystal clear that the administration did not even bothered to draw lessons in crowd management at Kumbh undertaken after earlier tragedies, the most recent one being in the 2013 Kumbh at the Prayagraj railway station.

In a panel discussion on a TV channel, News 24, on the Mahakumbh stampede tragedy, conducted by Garima Singh, a decorated police officer and a noted litterateur himself Vibhuti Narayan Rai, who was DIG of Allahabad in the late the1980s during the Kumbh congregation, narrated how late ND Tiwari, as then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh (he thrice assumed this post, the last time being 1988-89) had completely banned VIP movement in the Kumbh area and had even asked his cabinet ministers to forget security and walk all the way to the sangam for the ceremonial bath.

As an aside, Vidyadhar Date, a senior journalist who worked in the Times of India then, and who has authored a book, Traffic in the Era of Climate Change. Walking, Cycling, Public Transport need Priority, recently discussed on his Facebook page, how:

 “Kumbh Melas used to be much better organised in the past.  So much so that Rahul Mehrotra, Mumbai and Harvard based architect and professor did a lot of research and brought out a book after the previous Allahabad Mela of 2013. It was co-edited by Rahul Mehrotra and Felipe Vera. This book Kumbh Mela Mapping the Ephemeral City, registers the work of over fifty Harvard professors, students, administrative staff, and medical practitioners that with the support of the South Asia Institute made the pilgrimage to Allahabad, India, to the Kumbh Mela site in 2013, to analyze issues that emerge in any large-scale human gathering.”

'SELF BRANDING': NOTHING OFFICIAL ABOUT IT!

If the ruling dispensation was sensitive enough about the sufferings of the devotees and had thought over the possibility of any such eventuality, it would not have allowed VIP movement at all, and thus could have saved lives of innocent devotees.

In fact, before the tragedy struck, reporters and analysts had underlined how the whole congregation of devotees had also become an occasion for self-branding. How the sufferings of devotees had taken a back seat or how Mahakumbh had metamorphosed into "[a] story of Adityanath’s efforts at self-branding — apparently to position himself as heir to Prime Minister Narendra Mod”'.

It is not difficult to foresee that this tragedy, which has definitely aggravated the 'Modi-Yogi dissonance', has put a spanner, at least for the time being, in the plans of Yogi to emerge as number two in the Bharatiya Janata Party establishment.

While Yogi's plans seem thwarted for now, it is not the only subtext of this congregation.

Individual ambitions, aspirations apart, this congregation had been envisaged by the ideologues and leaders of the Hindutva Supremacist movement as one step ahead on the path of Hindu Rashtra.

Right from unleashing their long-term plans to further marginalise and invisibilise Muslims, under the pretext of safety of pilgrims by promoting some fake stories, or using the Seers and Sadhus gathered there (who had already been provided with lot of material and other support) to further and their exclusivist rhetoric to normalise the ‘Hindu First’ worldview, everything had been put in place.

HOW TO MARGINALISE MUSLIMS, LEGALLY?

A few months ago, the Muzaffarnagar administration had issued an order (July 2024) on the eve of the Kanwar Yatra asking eateries across the Yatra route to label their shops with names of their owners and even the workers employed at these eateries. This move had caused tremendous consternation not only among the religious minorities but also among people and formations who cherish the dream of a secular and democratic India. Following the outrage, the order was converted to 'advice' by the district administration

Later, the Yogi government itself issued similar order which was followed by the governments in Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh (all run by the BJP) which was challenged in the Supreme Court. The highest court, in its interim order, had stayed these orders by these various governments. What later transpired was that the various shopkeepers did put up name plates etc., without any formal orders. There is no proof whether they were intimidated or not, but effectively the Hindutva agenda to separate Muslims was 'voluntarily' implemented.

The Mahakumbh provided these forces an opportunity to further this crackdown on Muslim traders and marginalise and invisibilise them from 'the largest congregation on earth.' in very many ways.

Recall the talk of how banning Muslims from this congregation had started doing the rounds under various pretexts months before the Kumbh started. That this was not an empty boast became clear when the Kumbh started and the age-old tradition of a composite heritage found itself thwarted,

With the festival approaching in mid-January, the Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad, the governing body of 13 Hindu monastic orders, announced its decision not to allow “non-Sanatani people” — those who are not part of orthodox Hinduism — from entering or putting up stalls at the festival.

As things unfolded, the action plan to further this exclusivist agenda had many shocking things in store.

A day before the ill-fated Mauni Amavsya -- which witnessed the stampede -- a 'Sanatan Dharma Sansad' was organised at Mahakumbh, attended by seers of various monastic orders. They came up with many radical proposals to be submitted to the Central government.

These proposals included the formation of a Sanatan Hindu Board through an ordinance having jurisdiction over the entire country, freeing of all temples from government control and hand them over to Sadhus, resolving the Krishna Janmasthan issue the Ram temple way etc.

What is worth noting is that the Akhara Parishad had not participated in the gathering as it was opposed to the formation of a Sanatan Board.

Of late, the move to free temples from government control has slowly gained momentum, thanks to the interest shown by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. This regressive move disregards the fact how a group of priests had ganged together and were managing all these temples earlier and allegedly fleecing a lot of money.

These cliques wielded tremendous powers and had earlier emerged as bulwarks against any reformation or utilising the temple funds for public welfare.

After Independence, there was a concerted move on the part of social reformers etc., to 'liberate' these temples from private stranglehold.

HINDU RASHTRA CONSTITUTION: NOTHING SEDITIOUS?

It was probably the same day, when calls for the formation of a Sanatan Board was raised, that it was reported that a “constitution” of the proposed Akhand Hindu Rashtra had been finalised and was ready to be unveiled at the Mahakumbh and forwarded to the Centre on the occasion of Basant Panchami on February 2.

The 501-page document, prepared by a 25-member committee of scholars, draws inspiration from the Ramayana, the rules and teachings of Krishna, Manusmriti and Chanakya’s Arthashastra. Scholars of Sanatan Dharm, belonging to the Banaras Hindu University, Sampurnanand Sanskrit University in Varanasi and the Central Sanskrit University in New Delhi, had been roped in to form the 'Hindu Rashtra Samvidhan Nirmal Samiti', which had prepared this draft.

What is disturbing is that the patron of this committee even told reporters that 'their target was to make India a Hindu Nation by 2033'

There is enough documentary evidence to show that this is not the first time that such an attempt has been made to present a new Constitution of Independent India. One can recall the press conference held immediately after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992.

The only difference was that it was held at the house of a member of Parliament belonging to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the main opposition party then.

Swami Muktanand and Vamdeo Maharaj, who were closely associated with the Ram Mandir movement (India Today, January 31, 1993) addressed the press meet.

“This Constitution is anti-Hindu' and needs to be rejected. We have no faith in country's laws' and 'Sadhus are above the law of the land.”

The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government had also tried to change the Constitution, but lost in 2004. It had even appointed a commission headed by Chief Justice of India, MN Venkatachalaiah to review the Constitution.

We should always remember that such attempts will never stop because Hindutva Supremacist forces have always entertained an unending discomfort about the Constitution. As of now, the biggest roadblock in their path is the Constitution.

A three-pronged strategy awaits us -- one, to defend the Constitution, two, to expose such Supremacist forces, and three, lead social political movements to wean gullible people away from these reactionary forces.

The writer is an independent journalist. The views are personal.