Ahead of the organisation of the Maha Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj, strident calls were made by some sadhus and prominent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders occupying high constitutional posts in Uttar Pradesh appealing to bar Muslims to enter the mela. Against this backdrop, it is instructive to revisit Mahatma Gandhi’s travel to the Kumbh Mela in Haridwar in 1915, after he came back to India following the success of his first Satyagraha in South Africa.
In his autobiography My Experiments With Truth, he devoted one full chapter “Kumbha Mela” and wrote:
“This year – 1915 – was the year of the Kumbha fair, which is held at Hardvar once every 12 years.”
“I was by no means eager to attend the fair, but I was anxious to meet Mahatma Munshiramji who was in his Gurukul,” he stated.
He then added that Gopal Krishna Gokhale sent members of the Servants of India Society (SIS) under the leadership of Pandit Hridaynath Kunzru for rendering volunteer service at the Kumbh. He also despatched one Dr. Dev, a medical officer, for attending to health issues and emergencies faced by pilgrims. Gandhi mentioned that he was “…invited to send the Phoenix party to assist them” and Maganlal Gandhi had “already preceded” him.
The Kumbh Mela 2025. Photo: X/@myogiadityanath.
Hindu pani and Muslim pani
Gandhi’s description of the journey from Saharanpur to the Kumbh Mela venue in Haridwar captured the pain and agony of travel of the pilgrims. He stated that they were packed in carriages not meant for human beings but what he called, “for goods or cattle”. Without roofs over their heads they were sandwiched and roasted by the heat caused by the blazing midday sun overhead and the scorching iron floor beneath.
Gandhi then sharply focused attention of the religious prejudices of the pilgrims and their revulsion to accept portable water with deep suspicion that it could be other than Hindu Pani, Hindu Water. “The pangs of thirst, caused by even such a journey as this,” remarked Gandhi with deep pain, “could not persuade orthodox Hindus to take water, if it was ‘Musalmani’. They waited until they could get the ‘Hindu’ water,” he added with a heavy heart. “These very Hindus,” he sharply observed, “let it be noted, do not so much as hesitate or inquire when during illness the doctor administers them wine or prescribes beef tea, or a Musalman or Christian compounder gives them water.”
Those highly critical remarks of Gandhi brought out his disapproval of dividing food and beverages along religious lines. Those remarks made by him in 1915 starkly underline the religious polarisaion the country is facing after 2014 when calls are issued by the BJP and Hindutva leaders for committing genocide of minorities and Muslims in particular and boycotting them from social and economic activities. In Uttar Pradesh, it is not the people but the BJP government headed by Adityanath, which is in the forefront in asking the shopkeepers to display their names so that their religious and caste profiles would be made visible and food and beverages they sell would be marked along those profiles capturing the meaning and essence inherent in the practice of offering Musalmani pani (water) and Hindu pani in India.
Constructive services rendered by Gandhi
What Gandhi did in Kumbh Mela in Haridwar was more constructive and service oriented. Dr. Dev whose name is mentioned above had dug some pits for use as kuchcha lavatories in Kumbh Mela in Haridwar and was waiting for paid scavengers to keep those clean. But Gandhi, who learnt the lessons of scavenger’s work while staying in Shantiniketan, and pledged that the rest of his life in India would be devoted to that task offered to cover up the excreta with earth and his Phoenix party including Maganlal Gandhi followed him in doing so.
Devoid of piety
Many people in 1915 thronged to see Gandhi whose success in his first Satyagraha in South Africa made him an endearing figure commanding admiration of many Indians and pilgrims. As he went around the mela, he was pained to observe that most of the pilgrims were devoid of piety and their conduct was marked by attributes of, in the words of Gandhi, “absentmindedness, hypocrisy and slovenliness.” “The swarm of sadhus who had descended there,” he remarked with sadness, “seemed to have been born but to enjoy the good things of life”.
A cow with five feet
On spotting a cow with five feet, he expressed his surprise but later he was utterly shocked to see that “the poor five-footed cow was a sacrifice to the greed of the wicked”.
“I learnt,” he wrote, “that the fifth foot was nothing else but a foot cut off from a live calf and grafted upon the shoulder of the cow!” He noted that the devious purpose behind that double cruelty was to fleece money from the gullible pilgrims and those who were led by blind belief and superstition.”
“There was no Hindu but would be attracted by a five-footed cow, and no Hindu but would lavish his charity on such a miraculous cow,” wrote Gandhi with pain.
Absence of spiritual upliftment
Gandhi was candid enough to admit that he did not visit Kumbh Mela in Haridwar with the sentiments of a pilgrim.
“I have never thought,” he asserted, “of frequenting places of pilgrimage in search of piety.” Yet he observed that “…the seventeen lakhs of men that were reported to be there could not all be hypocrites or mere sightseers.”
He had no doubt that “…countless people amongst them had gone there to earn merit and for self-purification” but doubted if such pilgrimage, in any way, led to the true spiritual regeneration. Therefore, he remarked, “It is difficult, if not impossible, to say to what extent this kind of faith uplifts the soul.”
He was deeply agitated by those thoughts and introspected on it. He very thoughtfully wrote:
“There were those pious souls in the midst of the hypocrisy that surrounded them. They would be free of guilt before their Maker. If the visit to Hardvar was in itself a sin, I must publicly protest against it, and leave Hardvar on the day of Kumbha. If the pilgrimage to Hardvar and to the Kumbha fair was not sinful, I must impose some act of self-denial on myself in atonement for the iniquity prevailing there and purify myself. This was quite natural for me. My life is based on disciplinary resolutions.”
Rejection of the sacred thread
When Gandhi took bath in the Ganges and one Sadhu saw him without a scared thread on his body and tuff of hair (shikha) on his head he told him, “It pains me to see you, a believing Hindu, going without a sacred thread and the shikha. These are the two external symbols of Hinduism and every Hindu ought to wear them.”
Also read: Can the Ganga Survive the Kumbh Mela?
Gandhi recalled the story behind the practice which prompted him to wear the sacred thread. He was attracted by Brahmins doing so and tying a bunch of keys on it. He thought he would do the same. That time none was allowed to use sacred thread except the Brahmins but he wrote that a movement had just been started for making it obilgatory for the first three varnas to do so. Therefore, several members of the Gandhi clan adopted the sacred thread and he did the same even as he never got a chance to put bunch of keys in those threads. When the sacred thread on his body gave away he never put another one.
Both in India and South Africa, he was persuaded to restore the sacred thread on his body but he was unconvinced by citing that “if the Shudras may not wear it, I argued, what right have the other varnas to do so?” “And I saw no adequate reason,” he remarked, “for adopting what was to me an unnecessary custom.” “I had no objection to the thread as such, but the reasons for wearing it were lacking,” he argued.
Gandhi’s defence of Shudras
Gandhi’s defence of Shudras at the 1915 Kumbh Mela, where he rejected the sacred thread and questioned the hypocrisy of sadhus and superstitions masquerading as religion, holds immense significance for 2025. This is particularly relevant as BJP leaders utilise the Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj to promote divisive narratives and majoritarianism.
S.N. Sahu served as Officer on Special Duty to President of India K.R. Narayanan.
