Maha Kumbh 2025 clearly has the mark of a Nath Panthi saint, CM of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath.
Everyone who is reading this piece is fortunate to be living in the times and ages of Indic resurgence of Bharat, when Bharat and Bharatiyas learnt to take pride in their ancient wisdom, their rooted culture, science and its divine symbols. 40 crore proud Sanatanis are expected to visit and take a holy dip at the Sangam at Prayag Maha Kumbh 2025. These include saints, gurus, social reformers, businessmen, sports celebrities, film celebrities, content creators, social scientists, researchers and at the core of it—Kalpvasis and crores of common people of Bharat.
Maha Kumbh 2025 clearly has the mark of a Nath Panthi saint, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath. This saint took the Kumbh to Rs 15,000 crore budget from a meagre Rs 1,200 crore in 2013 in the time of Akhilesh Yadav. Rs 15,000 crore for a Hindu event—asked my Khan Market friends. How’s that even allowed in a secular country? I replied this on four levels.
First, when governments are collecting all the Hindu donations at all the large temples and when governments are controlling the large Hindu temples, they are the ones who have to organise the large Hindu events. Secondly, 75% of this expenditure is done on the permanent infrastructure—the airport terminals, national highways, new internal roads, permanent ghats, sewage management infrastructure, solid waste management infrastructure, city’s lighting, beautification and horticulture, murals, paintings and facade development, landscaping, crossroads, lighting, traffic systems, etc. Thirdly, this investment by the government is expected to generate an economy of Rs 2-3 lakh crores, which is 80-100 times of the investment of Rs 3,500-4,000 crores (25% of Rs 15,000 crore) on the Mela facilities. A Banaras Hindu University (BHU) study reveals that a person spends at a minimum of Rs 4,000-5,000, from door to door, while visiting such a pilgrimage. In the 2019 Kumbh, the Yogi government spent close to Rs 4,000 crore and as per CII’s report, it generated an economy of Rs 1 lakh crore plus. So, from a luxury tent vendor to a flower vendor to a tea seller, everyone gets Lakshmi-ji’s blessings at the Kumbh Mela. Lastly, the 10,000 odd camps set up by different Akharas, religious institutions and social organizations are being set up by these organizations; government only provides them with land and facilities of water and electricity. In the process of creating and operating the massive infrastructure of this massive temporary Kumbh Mela city, substantial employment has been parallelly generated in Prayagraj.
Prayag Maha Kumbh’s Mela City is spread in 4,000 hectares, divided in 25 sectors, with 12 km long developed ghats, with 10,000 organizations setting up camps, with 2 lakh tents, 5 lakh parking slots, 25,000 free public accommodation, 1.5 lakh toilets, 25,000 cleaning team, 25,000 dustbins, 30 pontoon bridges over the rivers and over 67,000 streetlights. 50,000 police personal, over 2,600 cameras and drones are deployed for crowd monitoring, incident reporting, face recognition, video summarization and security. Permanent ghats are developed over 12 km to spread the huge number of devotees over a large area. CM Yogi Adityanath’s team has not left any stone unturned to make this a safe, secure, grand and the cleanest Kumbh. For the Nath Panthi Yogi Chief Minister, this also must be an emotional moment. His Guru, Mahant Avaidyanath started the Ram Mandir movement with stalwarts like VHP’s Ashok Singhal, Devraha Baba, Lal Krishna Advani, Didi Ma Ritambhara and many others at this very Kumbh Mela. Prayag Maha Kumbh 2025 is the first Kumbh Mela in 500 years after the construction of the grand Ram Temple at Ayodhya, constructed under the Yogi government.
But why do so many people gather on these dates at these different Kumbh Melas across India? What’s so important and special about it? To answer this, we have to refer to the pages of Vishnu Puran. It all started with Airavat, the elephant. The story of the Kumbh started with an elephant? Yes it did. The Vishnu Puran reveals that once upon a time, Rishi Durvasa cursed Indra and the Devas to lose their power after Indra placed a garland offered by Rishi Durvasa on his elephant Airavat. Airavat, irritated by the scent of the garland, picked it with his trunk and threw it on the ground. Rishi Durvasa got furious and cursed Indra and the Devas to lose their kingdom, power, and glory.
Immediately Indra’s mighty vahana Airavat went into oblivion. Then Ma Lakshmi, the goddess of fortune, could no longer stay in the same realm as the Devas, and parted ways with Bhagwan Vishnu. She made the depths of Kshir Sagar her new home.
And due to Ma Lakshmi’s absence in Devlok, the Devas lost all their wealth and riches. The luminous Chandra, adorning Shiva’s matted hair, disappeared too. It resulted in complete destruction, destitution and powerlessness of Devlok. Asuras saw this opportunity and attacked Devas. Robbed of their power, the Devas were soon defeated by the Asuras in battle and lost whatever little they were left with, after Rishi Durvasa’s curse. The defeated Devas approached Bhagwan Vishnu for a solution, who advised them to churn Kshir Sagar, to obtain Amrit. Amrit or the nectar of immortality would help the Devas regain their powers. Churning an ocean was a humongous task. Devas co-opted Asuras to offer help as they too wanted immortality and invincible powers by consuming Amrit.
For churning an ocean, we need a big churning rod, a base and a large rope to rotate the churning rod. So, Mount Mandara was used as the churning rod, which was kept afloat in the ocean by Kurma, Vishnu’s turtle avatar. Nag king, Vasuki, who Shiva wears as a garland, became the churning rope. In fact, in the Dashavatara Hindu belief, Bhagwan Vishnu took his second avatar (Kurma Avatar) especially for this gigantic task.
First came Halahal or Kalakoot, a deadly poison and obviously there was no takers for that. Halahal poison was strong enough to kill all the beings from all the three realms—dharti, akash, patal. None amongst the armies of Asuras and Devas stepped in to stop the poison from spreading into the universe as they feared the poison would destroy them too.
Lord Shiva descended from Mount Kailash to consume the poison. Everyone has the same concern for Shiva. But Goddess Parvati used her powers to stop the Halahal in Shiva’s throat, and as a result, his throat turned blue. That’s why we also call Shiva as Neelkanth (Blue Throated). Then came Lakshmi, Apsaras, like Rambha, Menaka, Punjisthala, Varuni, supernatural animals—Kamadhenu, Airavata and Uchhaishravas—God Chandra, Parijat tree, Vishnu’s Sharanga bow, Panchajanya conch, and Kaustubh Mani. At last came Dhanvantri, the physician of the gods, with the Kumbh (pot) of Amrit. In this fierce tussle for the Amrit pot, drops of Amrit fell at four places—river Ganga at Haridwar, Sangam of Ganga-Jamuna-Saraswati at Prayagraj, Godavari at Trimbak (Nashik), and Shipra at Ujjain.
And that’s why Kumbh Mela is celebrated at these four holy places and millions come to take a dip in the holy rivers in these particular months. So much so that in 2025 Maha Kumbh 40 to 50 crore people are expected to take the dip at the Sangam at Prayag. Devotees more than the population of America will come and go from Prayag Maha Kumbh. The city of Prayagraj, which has a population of 15 lakhs will host people 300 times of its population. The Yogi Adityanath government has created an engineering genius, a management marvel, an urban planning case study for the world to follow to create this temporary city to host these 400 devotees and saints at Prayag Maha Kumbh. More than 25 institutions of the likes of IIMs, IITs, Stanford and Harvard are on the ground to study Prayag Maha Kumbh 2025. Owing to its grandeur and ancient value, Kumbh got the Intangible Cultural Heritage of humanity tag by the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage under UNESCO.
The whole Kumbh is having the clear mark of a sensitive Yogi’s presence as the captain of Uttar Pradesh. This is familiar turf for Yogi. He took sanyas at the age of 22, while doing his MSc degree. He has visited many Kumbhs with his guru Mahant Avaidyanath over the last three decades. He knows the highs and lows of organising the Kumbh. He knows the problems that saints and devotees face while visiting the Kumbh. For the 2025 Maha Kumbh, he has instructed his team to create an unparalleled experience for devotees. Before the start of the Kumbh, Yogi Adityanath went walking to each of the Akharas and met the prominent saints at the Kumbh. Yogi has asked his team to have temporary schools for the children of the members of the cleaning team and labour involved. In the last couple of months and weeks, he visited the Kumbh Mela City multiple times to monitor and observe each of the facilities himself.
In the first two Amrit Snans of the Prayag Maha Kumbh 3.5 crore devotees have taken the dip at the Sangam and many more millions are expected to come in this largest congregation on the planet.
* Shantanu Gupta is the biographer of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.