The portal has been created and developed by the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. Data has been provided by organisations of the Ministry of Culture. Government of India. Skip to main content. User account menu Log in. Textiles and Fabrics of India. Forts of India. Historic Cities of India. Intangible Cultural Heritage. Musical Instruments of India.
Research Papers. Photo Essays. Rare Books. Authorities from the colonial British government of the 19th century to the Indian government today have had to contend with the challenge of managing the spread of contagion during this huge gathering of people. The festival celebrates the Hindu myth of Samudra manthan — the churning of the cosmological ocean by the gods and demons to get the nectar of immortality, known as amrita.
In the fight that ensued for the amrita, several drops of the elixir fell to Earth, sanctifying the waters where they landed. The word Kumbh refers not only to the pot of nectar spilled on its way to the heavens , but also to the astrological sign of Aquarius, the water carrier, the time when the Kumbh Mela takes place.
Hindus believe that bathing in the sacred Ganges on the auspicious days of the festival leads to salvation from the endless cycle of reincarnation. The traditional start date of the Kumbh , Makara Sankranti, or the winter solstice, is in January. The festival is mentioned in British colonial records. In the archives of the British East India Co. Historians of religion have noted that the British conflated another ancient fair, which went by the name Magha Mela, with the Kumbh Mela.
At the time, the East India Co. The East India Co. During that time the British administration, in collaboration with the local police and heads of pilgrim organizations, made attempts to improve the infrastructure of the Kumbh Mela, including laying new railway lines, widening the access roads and building bigger bathing platforms, or ghats.
There had been concerns from the start that holding the Kumbh was fraught with risks. Health experts had warned the government in early March that "a new and more contagious variant of the coronavirus was taking hold in the country" and letting millions of largely unmasked people gather for a festival was not prudent. Uttarakhand's former chief minister, Trivendra Singh Rawat, told me that he had planned the Kumbh to be a "limited, symbolic event" from the start because experts were "telling me that the pandemic is not going to end soon".
I was worried that healthy people would visit Haridwar and take the infection back with them everywhere. But just days before the festival, he was replaced by Tirath Singh Rawat, who famously remarked that with "the blessings of Ma Ganga [Ganges, the river goddess] in the flow, there would be no corona".
The new chief minister said "nobody will be stopped", a negative Covid report was not necessary to attend, and that it would be enough to follow safety rules. But as millions descended on the town, officials struggled to impose safety norms. Haridwar's chief medical officer, Dr Shambhu Kumar Jha, told me that crowd management became "very difficult" because people didn't come with negative reports and that they "couldn't turn back the devout who had come all the way driven by faith".
They look very good on paper, but it's impossible to implement them," Anoop Nautiyal, founder of an Uttarakhand-based think tank, told the BBC. Mr Nautiyal, who has been collating the health ministry data since the state recorded its first case on 15 March , says Uttarakhand had recorded cases in the week from 14 to 20 March, just as pilgrims had begun arriving.
The cases rose rapidly after that, with 38, cases recorded between 25 April and 1 May - the last week of the festival. I asked Dr Kant if there's anything India could do now to contain the damage done by allowing the gathering. It's tragic that the pilgrims have carried the infection everywhere," he said.
Our ship has gone too far out into the sea. Interwoven with Kumbh Mela history, these sacred destinations hold great importance in Hinduism as it is believed a dip in the rivers here can cleanse your soul and let you attain Moksha. Prayag now known as Allahabad is a holy city for the Hindu devotees which is believed to be the spot where Lord Brahma first offered his sacrifice after the creation of earth. This city was one of the four spots where ambrosia dropped due to which it is a Kumbh Mela destination.
Here Kumbh is held when Jupiter is in Taurus and the sun and the moon are in Capricorn. Devotees throng the Ghats of Allahabad to take a holy dip in order to attain Moksha. Haridwar dubbed the Gateway to Lord Vishnu is a holy city for Hindu devotees.
0コメント