My tryst with the Kumbh Mela began in 2001, when I went to cover the Mahakumbh and like all other sceptical rationalist hard secular journalists, I watched, astounded, as millions of people became ennobled and enhanced by river and sun.
I had expected raucous crowds, filth, stampeding multitudes and ghastly conditions. Instead, among the dirt poor pilgrims that moved towards the sangam, I found dignity, introspection and a deep quiet.Among the rogues and trickers in the sadhu samaj, I found philosophers, graduates in physics and chemistry for whom god was a quest for the ancient energy that started the earth.
I found how the political Hinduism of the VHP which was holding its ridiculous dharma sansad at the Mahakumbh was nothing but a joke, scorned and laughed at by the kalpvasi who walked past it.Confronted by the magnificience of the ganga, dwarfed by the enormous embrace of the Kumbh, the peddlers of perverted hatred became nothing but a foolish caricature. The VHP was a grotesque gate crasher, a crude uninvited visitor, under the mellow sunlight of makar sankranti.
This year the sunlight was equally soft, the touch of the water featherlight yet buoyant, the faith of the pilgrims still as unobtrusive and as grand. All 13 main akharas or Hindu monasteries were there: mahanirvani, scholarly and serious, which always bathes first at the time of the holy bath or shahi snan. Niranjani comes next and is supposed to be the most charitable of all akharas. And then there is the third and most ancient akhara to bathe during the Shahi Snan: Juna akhara. Juna are the Hell's Angels of the kumbh.
The naga or naked sadhus of the Juna are the most fearsome, the most athletic, many of them ganja addicted atheletes capable of stunning physical feats. "Juna ka atank" whisper pilgrims as the raging bad-tempered ash smeared men rush past, brandishing their swords and lances or on horseback. Juna akhara is the star of the Kumbh, dazzlingly horrifying sadhus who are notoriously cantankerous, totally intolerant of polite society, formidably unconcerned about rules and regulations of behaviour and whose favorite enemy is the media and also the VHP.
Ashtkosal Nandkishore Bharti, mahant of the Juna akhara, who is able to balance himself on his trishul and also to somersault into the ganga, says he will spear a VHP or Bajrang Dal member if they dare to come near the Juna akhara. "Those who seek to make politics from dharma will be hung by me personally until there is no breath left in their cowardly bodies," he said sternly. Ashtkosal Sudarshan Bharti, another member of the Juna akhara is equally vehement about politicians.
"If I had been in Gujarat I would have taught a lesson to those who are the killers of women and children." The politicians of the Hindu right can heap scorn on the pseudo-secularists, they can pour venom on macaulay ki aulad and those English speaking rootless leftist folk who can't understand their commitment to bharat, but at the Kumbh Mela, the extremist proponents of Hindutva would find themselves staring at the trishul of the Juna akhara.
Why does Nandkishore Bharti live like a Naga baba? The answer is simple. "it makes me happy." Would he not prefer grihasth ashram? Another simple answer: "Nice food? Nice drink? But isn't that temporary and short-lived? The truly happy are those who stretch
themselves towards a daily challenge, those who stretch themselves towards the impossible, towards challenges that look more formidable than our own capacities. They are the ones who are really happy." Ashtkosal Nandkishore Bharti is illiterate, dirty and foul mouthed. He ran away from home because he was an orphan and the sadhus took him in because he was found almost dead with fever in a Himachal town. He's a nonentity, a nobody, a member of a community branded as freakish and absurd by the rest of us normal people. Yet he can turn double somersaults by simply leaping off the ground and into the water. He can balance himself on one arm on his trishul. And he can run across a tightrope as if it was a wide platform. In New York or London, ashtkosal nandkishore bharti would have been an international star. At the Kumbh he is simply one of the more troublesome members of the Juna akhara and his delinquent talents will die with him.
Perhaps, sometimes Mother India scorns her most talented sons. Instead she raises to eminence her meek and well-fed sons who ride about in convoys of cars,
have no talent and accept her suzerainty unquestioningly.Those sons who challenge Mother India's pre-conceived notions are relegated to the dust.
Who are the akharas of the Hindu religion? According to GS Ghurye's comprehensive book, Indian Sadhus, the naked nagas are remnants of private armies that temple establishments maintained in India for centuries for protection and privacy. The earliest travelers to India have commented on the band of naked ascetics who wandered the countryside.
Naked warriors bore arms, were trained in the art of warfare and cleared the way for pandits and mandaleswars during their travels. India's nude ascetic warriors were supposed to gain their strength and ability for battle from their brahmachari way of life and their long penance in the mountains. With the coming of the British the naked ascetics warriors were outlawed and became marginalized freaks. But until today most akharas have a lance planted in the ground in front of their gates that remind of their warlike ancestry.
There is another heartwarming aspect of the Kumbh. In many ways its nothing but a giant village fair where the poorest of the poor can access a welfare system. In a country without a social security net or without the dole or without a welfare scheme, it is the religious orders that take in the poor and needy and shelter them. Little boys from impoverished families bring flutes, peacock fathers, threats and paper windmills for sale here for a bit of extra money in a life of wage labour. There are no big brands at the Kumbh: only Big Babool toothpaste and Medimix soap.
Although many rich temples and gurus set up ashrams at the Kumbh, it is also a festival of the poor, where a share cropper from West Bengal can watch a Hema Malini dance performance for free.
The Kumbh mela is much more than an extraordinary spectacle. It is a living embodiment of the India that has lost out in mainstream discourse and development choices. Yet like the ancient chemical equation under the polluted water, there is a strange sustaining power. And among the pilgrims walks a familiar figure. I saw him almost clearly. He was wearing a loincloth and little round glasses and carrying a walking stick.
About the AuthorSagarika Ghose Sagarika Ghose has been a journalist for 20 years, starting her career with The Times of India, then moving to become part of the start-up team...Read Morefirst published:January 19, 2007, 09:00 ISTlast updated:January 19, 2007, 09:00 IST
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The Ardh Kumbh is in progress in Allahabad. It is not perhaps as grand as the Mahakumbh of 2001. The crowds are less formidable. The sadhu samaj not on full display in all its dizzying eccentricity. Yet the first smudge of dawn over the ganga is still as pure. That primeaval chemical equation under the water still as strong. The cold hard penance of the kalpvasi (pilgrims who live by the river) still as impressive.
My tryst with the Kumbh Mela began in 2001, when I went to cover the Mahakumbh and like all other sceptical rationalist hard secular journalists, I watched, astounded, as millions of people became ennobled and enhanced by river and sun.
I had expected raucous crowds, filth, stampeding multitudes and ghastly conditions. Instead, among the dirt poor pilgrims that moved towards the sangam, I found dignity, introspection and a deep quiet.Among the rogues and trickers in the sadhu samaj, I found philosophers, graduates in physics and chemistry for whom god was a quest for the ancient energy that started the earth.
I found how the political Hinduism of the VHP which was holding its ridiculous dharma sansad at the Mahakumbh was nothing but a joke, scorned and laughed at by the kalpvasi who walked past it.Confronted by the magnificience of the ganga, dwarfed by the enormous embrace of the Kumbh, the peddlers of perverted hatred became nothing but a foolish caricature. The VHP was a grotesque gate crasher, a crude uninvited visitor, under the mellow sunlight of makar sankranti.
This year the sunlight was equally soft, the touch of the water featherlight yet buoyant, the faith of the pilgrims still as unobtrusive and as grand. All 13 main akharas or Hindu monasteries were there: mahanirvani, scholarly and serious, which always bathes first at the time of the holy bath or shahi snan. Niranjani comes next and is supposed to be the most charitable of all akharas. And then there is the third and most ancient akhara to bathe during the Shahi Snan: Juna akhara. Juna are the Hell's Angels of the kumbh.
The naga or naked sadhus of the Juna are the most fearsome, the most athletic, many of them ganja addicted atheletes capable of stunning physical feats. "Juna ka atank" whisper pilgrims as the raging bad-tempered ash smeared men rush past, brandishing their swords and lances or on horseback. Juna akhara is the star of the Kumbh, dazzlingly horrifying sadhus who are notoriously cantankerous, totally intolerant of polite society, formidably unconcerned about rules and regulations of behaviour and whose favorite enemy is the media and also the VHP.
Ashtkosal Nandkishore Bharti, mahant of the Juna akhara, who is able to balance himself on his trishul and also to somersault into the ganga, says he will spear a VHP or Bajrang Dal member if they dare to come near the Juna akhara. "Those who seek to make politics from dharma will be hung by me personally until there is no breath left in their cowardly bodies," he said sternly. Ashtkosal Sudarshan Bharti, another member of the Juna akhara is equally vehement about politicians.
"If I had been in Gujarat I would have taught a lesson to those who are the killers of women and children." The politicians of the Hindu right can heap scorn on the pseudo-secularists, they can pour venom on macaulay ki aulad and those English speaking rootless leftist folk who can't understand their commitment to bharat, but at the Kumbh Mela, the extremist proponents of Hindutva would find themselves staring at the trishul of the Juna akhara.
Why does Nandkishore Bharti live like a Naga baba? The answer is simple. "it makes me happy." Would he not prefer grihasth ashram? Another simple answer: "Nice food? Nice drink? But isn't that temporary and short-lived? The truly happy are those who stretch
themselves towards a daily challenge, those who stretch themselves towards the impossible, towards challenges that look more formidable than our own capacities. They are the ones who are really happy." Ashtkosal Nandkishore Bharti is illiterate, dirty and foul mouthed. He ran away from home because he was an orphan and the sadhus took him in because he was found almost dead with fever in a Himachal town. He's a nonentity, a nobody, a member of a community branded as freakish and absurd by the rest of us normal people. Yet he can turn double somersaults by simply leaping off the ground and into the water. He can balance himself on one arm on his trishul. And he can run across a tightrope as if it was a wide platform. In New York or London, ashtkosal nandkishore bharti would have been an international star. At the Kumbh he is simply one of the more troublesome members of the Juna akhara and his delinquent talents will die with him.
Perhaps, sometimes Mother India scorns her most talented sons. Instead she raises to eminence her meek and well-fed sons who ride about in convoys of cars,
have no talent and accept her suzerainty unquestioningly.Those sons who challenge Mother India's pre-conceived notions are relegated to the dust.
Who are the akharas of the Hindu religion? According to GS Ghurye's comprehensive book, Indian Sadhus, the naked nagas are remnants of private armies that temple establishments maintained in India for centuries for protection and privacy. The earliest travelers to India have commented on the band of naked ascetics who wandered the countryside.
Naked warriors bore arms, were trained in the art of warfare and cleared the way for pandits and mandaleswars during their travels. India's nude ascetic warriors were supposed to gain their strength and ability for battle from their brahmachari way of life and their long penance in the mountains. With the coming of the British the naked ascetics warriors were outlawed and became marginalized freaks. But until today most akharas have a lance planted in the ground in front of their gates that remind of their warlike ancestry.
There is another heartwarming aspect of the Kumbh. In many ways its nothing but a giant village fair where the poorest of the poor can access a welfare system. In a country without a social security net or without the dole or without a welfare scheme, it is the religious orders that take in the poor and needy and shelter them. Little boys from impoverished families bring flutes, peacock fathers, threats and paper windmills for sale here for a bit of extra money in a life of wage labour. There are no big brands at the Kumbh: only Big Babool toothpaste and Medimix soap.
Although many rich temples and gurus set up ashrams at the Kumbh, it is also a festival of the poor, where a share cropper from West Bengal can watch a Hema Malini dance performance for free.
The Kumbh mela is much more than an extraordinary spectacle. It is a living embodiment of the India that has lost out in mainstream discourse and development choices. Yet like the ancient chemical equation under the polluted water, there is a strange sustaining power. And among the pilgrims walks a familiar figure. I saw him almost clearly. He was wearing a loincloth and little round glasses and carrying a walking stick.
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