The meaning of the Maha Kumbh Mela

India is still learning to truly value its cultural treasures. The Kumbh is a great classroom for this lesson.

I was barely 22 when I went to the Maha Kumbh Mela at the Allahabad sangam at the turn of the millennium—this was the big one, once in 144 years. It was the biggest cultural immersion possible from which I emerged thoroughly decolonised.
The gathering of countless sadhus, under countless tents, on a riverbank, with special auspicious bathing days where the dip in the holy waters of the trijunction of rivers would be led by warrior ascetics, the Naga sadhus, with dreadlocks, ashen bodies, carrying tridents, and naked.

I had gone to Allahabad (now Prayagraj) having read a bunch of writings on the Kumbh from reporters from various British and American newspapers. Barely out of college, I thought these clippings were the best researched pieces to read-up on the Kumbh. I remember one journalist writing that when he woke up in the morning in the train that was taking him to Allahabad, he thought outside people were shouting, “Tchaikovsky, Tchaikovsky, Tchaikovsky.” What they were really saying of course, these vendor boys with their aluminum kettles and mud cups, was. “chai-coffee, chai-coffee, chai-coffee.” I went to the Kumbh with this curious notion of telling “the world” (I was a junior reporter at an international news wire agency) about this “spectacle”.

But the Kumbh destroyed any notions of being “an outsider”. The most resonant feeling that I still remember so distinctly from the Kumbh is an overwhelming sense of déjà vu—I had seen these visuals before. I knew this place—even though I had never attended a Kumbh in my life or even been to the city of Allahabad.

The Kumbh, seen through external eyes, was always about a sort of spectacle exotique—this idea had been drilled into many Indian minds too. But to experience the Kumbh is to live through a process which brings alive Gustav Mahler’s words, “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, it is the preservation of fire.” Something very old, something not from this lifetime alone, awakens within you, something primal, something ethereal.
There was a point in India’s secularised history when “modern” Indians would look at the immenseness of something like the Kumbh and complain about all kinds of things—too crowded, too unsafe, why spend so much money, this is all superstition, we need to move to the age of innovation and technology, and leave just antiquated things behind.

All of these arguments are fundamentally wrong. The Kumbh Mela is a living register of our civilisation. For thousands of years, Hindus have been dipping into the holy waters in the same way, at the same astrologically determined days and times, uttering the same chants and mantras—an unbroken stream of tradition which is not merely a cultural treasure but it is the lifeline, the umbilical cord of knowledge that is the holding frame of the very act of being Indian. In each act performed at the Kumbh, from the ceremonial arrivals and departures of the great akhadas, or monastic groups or orders, the rituals, the celebrations on the days of the mass bathing in the holy waters, there is a sense of the continuation of time and tradition. The Kumbh and its origin story lie at the very heart of Indian itihasa—it is said that when the devas and the asuras churned the ocean to get the vessel with amrit, the elixir of life, four drops fell from the pot when it sprung out of the ocean. One fell upon Prayagraj, and the others at Nashik, Ujjain, and Haridwar. Each drop became a riverine confluence, sacred and rich in transcendental meaning, a dip here cleans much more than merely sins, it clarifies our very karma.

Far from being raucous and disorderly, I saw a festival showcasing the organisational skill and scale of a billion people—for on the riverbanks an entire city came up (and comes up each time the festival is held) with countless tents, some absolutely basic, some extravagant and fit for kings, and food and hygiene arrangements made for tens of millions of people who gather at this confluence to beat all confluences.
If there is one time in India when the citizen and the state work in tandem, cooperating with one another, it is at the Kumbh. Everyone knows that nothing less than divine mercy is at stake, and failure would be letting down God.
The Kumbh is also a living example of domestic revenue generation using profound cultural resources. While from 2019 (when the Kumbh was last held at Prayagraj), the budget has doubled, for the Kumbh in January 2025 at the same venue, it is important to remember that with around 400 million people expected to attend the festival, the revenue expected to be generated is around Rs 2 trillion (two lakh crore rupees), approximately double the amount for 2019. The ecosystem of the Kumbh uplifts endless small and medium scale vendors and businesses, and of course big business including in transport and tourism. It is an example of how culture can unlock value at the grassroots and provide significant income boost through event-based business. Many vendors and contractors at Prayagraj would be making more money during the 45-day Kumbh mela period than they would all of the rest of 2025. The Kumbh is a glimpse of how great temple towns used to function in ancient India—after all the great tented city of the Kumbh becomes its own independent temple town, a sacred ecosystem with its own processes and rhythm—bringing all the functions and needs of human life, from commerce to consciousness, together in one seamless stream.

This makeshift city operates well above the functioning capabilities of many Indian cities, where infrastructure and administration remain chaotic—and therefore the Kumbh and its mammoth organisation is a striking example of what is possible if, even momentarily, our political capital works in tandem with our bureaucratic processes. Millions gather, conduct their business, participate in rituals, live, eat, light fires, clean themselves, and bathe in the river, and then disperse, back to where they came from, peacefully, and without much ado. All of this, all the while, taking the name of God. If all of modern life is about incentivising structures and processes to build fruitful end results, then Kumbh shows how, even the incentives are divine grace, first world standards of efficiencies in organisation can be built in countries with just below $3,000 per capita income.

Indians have spent too little time studying the impact of spiritual-based organisations and events from Hindu traditions and sects on ideas of leadership, management, cooperation, efficiency, and governance. Our leadership ideas, such as they are, are all mostly borrowed from Western, so-called secularised contexts. We do not, therefore, understand how to use motivations and incentives that work for, and within, our culture to unlock value, and for socio-cultural “nudge” purposes. Some of my new research is on Indian, and more specifically, Hindu ideas of leadership, and in the Kumbh I see one of humanity’s great living examples stretching from antiquity (almost from “before time”) to present-day of the power of spiritual persuasion, and organisational motivation. The Kumbh is one of India’s “eternal” cultural treasures, only, unusually for such treasures, it is a “living” entity, and not a mothballed “classical” item, to be museum-ed and seen from afar—the Kumbh is alive, and is to be, more than anything else, lived, and should be viewed and respected as such.

* Hindol Sengupta is a historian and author of 12 books. He is professor of international relations at O.P. Jindal Global University.