The Bharatiya Janata Party government of Uttar Pradesh, led by chief minister Adityanath has done relentless publicity on the fact that employment of artificial intelligence-enabled technology could help count crores of pilgrims attending the Maha Kumbh Mela and facilitate arrangements for ensuring their safety and security. These sounded especially hollow when the government took 17 long hours after the stampede struck to inform the nation about the death of 30 pilgrims. Many are claiming that hundreds have been killed and many more became victims of severe injuries. The Uttar Pradesh government’s non-transparent manner of dealing with the manmade disaster in Kumbh Mela and attempts to conceal its details and even CCTV coverage testify to its calculated design to hide the truth of a catastrophe of such a magnitude.
On January 31, President Droupadi Murmu, while addressing the members of both the Houses of Parliament assembled together on the occasion of the commencement of its budget session, did not refer to the number of devotees killed in the Kumbh Mela. She only expressed her “sorrow over the unfortunate incident that occurred on Mauni Amavasya” and wished for the “speedy recovery of the injured”.
It is against this backdrop that it is instructive to learn lessons from the tragedy at the first Kumbh Mela of independent India organised 81 years ago in February 1954. It was reported in the media of that time that the casualty was huge and over 500 people were killed due to stampedes.
On February 18, 1954, while participating in the discussion on the president’s address in the Lok Sabha, among several members criticising the Congress government for the massive tragedy, H.N. Mukherjee representing the Calcutta North-East constituency accused the “secular government and its religious pandits” of attracting people by putting ads on the Mela, relaxing restrictions for compulsory inoculation and neglect of ordinary pilgrims by looking after the self-styled VIPs whose conduct he indicted by calling them “new fangled Harshavardhans”.
He demanded action against those responsible for the tragedy and compensation for the bereaved families.
Modi’s attack on Nehru on the 1954 Kumbh Mela tragedy
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who always looks for an opportunity to denigrate former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, had severely castigated him while speaking at Koushambi on May 1, 2019, for the death of hundreds of pilgrims at the 1954 Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj due to a stampede. He praised the successful handling of the Mela in UP that year by the Adityanath government. Modi claimed that the media did not expose the tragedy and death toll in 1954 to protect Nehru’s image and his government.
He went on to charge: “The stampede victims’ families’ names were never mentioned and not a single rupee was given to them (as compensation),” and accused Nehru of displaying insensitivity. Parliament debates of 1954 showed that Nehru spoke about the terrible tragedy Kumbh Mela in the Rajya Sabha on February 15 that year immediately after president Rajendra Prasad’s address to members of both the Houses of parliament assembled together on the occasion of the commencement of its budget session. Nehru then described the tragedy as a national tragedy. Modi did not make a statement in parliament on the deaths and injuries in the 2025 Kumbh Mela after president Murmu’s address to the parliament when its budget session started on January 31, this year.
It may be recalled that in his aforementioned address in 1954 Prasad categorically stated that there was unprecedented gathering of pilgrims at Kumbh Mela in Allahabad and a large number of persons were crushed to death by the uncontrollable passage of others over them in spite of the great pains taken by UP government “to make satisfactory arrangements for this great concourse of human beings.” In contrast, as stated earlier, Murmu in 2025 never referred to the death of pilgrims.
Also read: Let Us Not Overdo this ‘Triumph of Faith’
Nehru on Kumbh Mela
When on February 15, 1954, Nehru said a statement in the Rajya Sabha that the deaths in the Kumbh Mela were “…undoubtedly a national tragedy,” B. Rath, an MP from Odisha, intervened and said that the Union government was responsible for the deaths of people in the Mela as it attempted to attract millions from all parts of the country to the event. While the then Chairman, Rajya Sabha, S. Radhakrishnan asked him to take up those points when the House would discuss the issue, Nehru said that even though rules of the House would not permit discussion on a state issue, the report of the Kumbh Mela tragedy would be placed on the table and discussed.
Can Modi describe the Kumbh Mela tragedy of 2025 as a national tragedy following what Nehru did in 1954? Probably not. More shocking is his silence over the suppression of much needed basic information about the death of pilgrims this year.
Nehru, while intervening in the Lok Sabha on February 22, 1954, referred to MP Jaipal Singh’s remark that the government of India in President’s address gave a clean chit to the UP government on the tragedy. Nehru expressed surprise and refuted it by saying, “All that the President said in that connection was that the U.P. Government had taken great pains to make satisfactory arrangements for this great concourse of human beings”. While admitting the occurrence of the trouble he asserted that the failure and mistakes of UP government in dealing with it would not negate the pains it underwent while preparing to ensure safety and security of the pilgrims.
Nehru referred to Acharya Kripalani (who was part of the opposition in 1954) and his allegation that the government invited, encouraged and pushed people into the Mela by arranging special trains. Nehru stated that Kripalani’s charge never constituted the correct way of appreciating the situation. He argued that whenever large crowds were expected the Railways made arrangements as a matter of course. Such arrangements, Nehru said, were done by political regimes regardless who was at the helm of affairs.
Nehru in his reply then reflected on the aspects concerning people’s travel to Prayagraj as pilgrims and their imagination that their faith or the country’s faith or anybody’s faith’ was being governed by the planets, the sun or the moon. He also referred to their persistent belief that they could wash away their sins by bathing in the Ganges. While remarking forcefully that he never entertained the “wish to shock anybody’s faith” he made clear his stand against astrologers and described them and others of that category as “the most undesirable crew”, doing a lot of harm to the country. When the then Union home minister Dr. Katju said, “They continue to flourish,” Nehru replied, “No; I hope they will not. I have no doubt about that”.
Agreeing with a MP’s views that superstitions persisted, he added, “…There are very few of us who are free from some kind of superstition or other” and “It is always the case of one’s own orthodoxy and the other’s heterodoxy; one’s own superstition which is justified and the other’s is sheer superstition!”
“There are. of course, religious superstitions, but there are political superstitions and economic superstitions, — all kinds of superstitions,” Nehru remarked. “Let us,” he asserted, “fight all these superstitions”.
He then argued, “…The only way to fight them really is to increase what I call the temper and the climate of science. And that is why the best thing that this Government has done…is the establishment of those National Laboratories where scientific experiments are carried on”.
Such an open minded approach to deal with superstitions by employing “temper and climate of science” distinguished him as statesman with an inclusive and liberal outlook.
Nehru then reflected on the issue of taking a holy dip in the Ganges at the time of the Kumbh Mela. Those reflections assume critical significance in the context of dispelling superstition and promoting scientific temper.
He recalled his visits to Kumbh Mela and his upbringing in Allahabad, (now Prayagraj), and how Ganga and Yamuna remained forever a part of the texture of his life. While admitting that he enjoyed bathing in the Ganga whenever such opportunities came his way, he remarked, “I made it a point never bathing there on a sacred occasion, so as not to mislead others”.
When Kripalini said, “But others do the opposite”, Nehru remarked, “May be; of course, I cannot answer that”.
He then gave a profound reasoning in support of his stand and said that the stars or the bathing in the Ganga never affected him in the slightest degree. But he acknowledged that he was “…Very powerfully affected by the huge concourse of human beings, of Indians, wherever they are”.
“I am affected by them, and I want to be in tune with them, to understand them, and I want to influence them in the best manner possible, therefore, I try to go there – not to the Kumbh Mela – if I have the chance to meet them I have gone to Melas previously, but not with the idea of merely condemning them,” he remarked.
Nehru then sensitively stated, “They are a very fine lot. They have their superstitions. If I can convince them of what I consider is wrong, I try to convince them. But it doesn’t do me much harm if they go and have a dip in the Ganga, and I do not see why I should waste my energies over it; there are many other things that perhaps I have to fight. Ultimately, one does this, I suppose, more positively in other ways. And here I must say all my sense of history comes up before me and when I think of the long course of years and centuries that these people have behaved in this way, well, I want to understand that—why that has happened, why that is happening, what force there is, apart from the superstitions, in that?”
“There must be something else about it,” he said and proceeded to add, “I want to be in tune with them, being myself what I am, not in tune with their superstitions but be in tune with them, because I am their fellow traveler, and I have to understand them”.
These utterances of Nehru are of abiding significance to appreciate the human emotions that draw people to participate in the Kumbh Mela and purge highly polarised and majoritarian narratives inculcated in the minds of people by BJP leaders who understand it through a divisive lens.
S.N. Sahu served as officer on Special Duty to President of India K. R Narayanan.
