Swami Haripuri aka Kabootar Baba, 45, has a pigeon perched on his matted hair. He says they are both Shiva devotees.
Face smeared with ash, the media-shy sadhu tosses out a few words to reporters as he hurries away: “My pigeon and I will take the holy dip at the Sangam; we did so at the 2019 Ardh Kumbh too.”
Haripuri arrived at the Mahakumbh in Allahabad from Mewar, Rajasthan, three days before the Mela’s Monday opening. His bird turned him into an instant cynosure but he is seeking complete seclusion till the event ends on February 26.
◉ Yogi Adityanath is not so coy. A fleet of LED vans is crisscrossing almost every district of Uttar Pradesh, displaying the chief minister’s pictures and scenes from the Mahakumbh area while blaring out slogans urging people to visit the Kumbh.
Rajesh Shukla, a local sadhu, said politicians may do whatever they want, the sadhus and pilgrims "don’t want anything from anybody except time to worship the gods".
◉ Sitting in his tent, Swami Deogiri aka Rabriwale Baba of Vrindavan is distributing free rabri (a sweet made of condensed milk) among devotees. "The first plate every morning is dedicated to Kapil Muni. Thereafter, rabri is given to all visitors through the day,” he says.
Deogiri claims he receives free milk with which his team prepares enough rabri to give a few spoonfuls each to about 1 lakh pilgrims every day.
“I don’t like publicity. You can have the rabri but please don’t cover me for your news channels,” he tells reporters. “Religion is a deeper idea for me than for those who look for publicity through God.”
◉Teams of Adityanath's ministers have attended his government's road shows held elsewhere in the country — for instance, in Mohali, Punjab, on December 30 — ostensibly to "publicise the Mahakumbh". They displayed banners and posters showing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Adityanath.
◉ A four-year-old sadhu, Sant Shravan Puri, has generated curiosity at the Mahakumbh. His mentor, Baba Shyam Puri, claims that Shravan’s parents, who live at Fatehabad in Haryana, “donated” him to the Juna Akhara in 2021. The child monk recites from the Hanuman Chalisa, his voice often faltering, along with the other sadhus every morning.
“Some couples pledge to donate their first child to God. We have a half-dozen such children in our ashram. We have brought all of them here to train them as sadhus. They become the purest of humans,” Shyam Puri tells reporters as Shravan plays in his lap.
“Don’t focus the camera on him. Let him grow naturally, don’t make him feel uncomfortable,” he requests reporters and devotees who have come to see Shravan.
◉ One of the state government’s newspaper ads displays pictures of Modi and Adityanath and reads: “Bole Sangam ki pawan dhara, ek rahe Hindustan hamara (The holy land of Sangam says, let our Hindustan remain united).”
To some, the latter half of the text might appear to carry shades of the call for Hindu unity that the chief minister had sounded during the recent Maharashtra elections.
In sharp contrast to the deep and serene religiosity of most of the monks and ordinary pilgrims, the state government has been accused of turning the event into a crass vote-catching exercise as well as a money-spinning machine for industry.
“It’s not just the Kumbh or Ardh Kumbh, I come here every year during Magh Mela, stay for a month and worship the Ganga, Shiva, Ram, Sita and Lakshmi,” Janaki Jha, 64, from Sitamarhi in Bihar tells a reporter.
She is camping on the Jhusi side — opposite the Allahabad city side — of the Sangam (the confluence of the Ganga and the Yamuna where the Mela is held).
“Earlier, I used to stay on the city side but with the government allocating more and more land to corporate groups and friendly Akharas, the Mela administration pushed us to the other side of the Ganga (Phaphamau and Jhusi) in 2013,” she said.
“Earlier, I had to walk about 1km to reach the Sangam, now I have to walk 4km. It’s okay — some people worship power and money, I worship gods and goddesses.”
Over a fifth of the about 4,000-hectare Mela area has been allocated to hoteliers who have set up luxury tents and canopies to rent out to the very rich.
Amit Jauhari, a hotelier, told reporters he had set up 220 dome and wooden cottages at the site.
“The dome cottages cost ₹1.1 lakh a night and the wooden cottages, ₹81,000 a night. This includes every facility, including the supply of puja items,” he said.
The Adani group has tied up with Iskcon to distribute “mahaprasadam” among the devotees every day. On Friday, it announced on X that it had signed an agreement with the Geeta Press to print and distribute 1 crore copies of the Aarti Sangrah at the Mela.
“Our selfless service and responsibility towards religion-culture is a form of nationalism, to which we all are devoted,” Gautam Adani wrote in Hindi.
Mela officials expect to host industrialist Mukesh Ambani’s family too: Adityanath had met his son Anant Ambani in Mumbai last month and handed him the invitation.
Shukla, the local sadhu, said the money power and publicity drive would not undermine the Kumbh’s religious importance.
“It’s not important who is making the arrangements and who is playing sidekick to a political party or government, what’s important is that the Mela will retain its charm because of the spontaneity and religiosity of the common sadhus and Kalpvasis, who don’t want anything from anybody except time to worship gods,” Shukla said.
The Kalpvasis are monks and ordinary pilgrims who stay in isolation in small tents along the Ganga’s banks through the entire Mela. They spend virtually every waking minute praying to whichever god they believe in and performing the Kumbh rituals, never interacting with anyone.
“If you blame Adityanath for monetising the Mela, you must blame Akhilesh Yadav first for showing how such religious festivals can be misused as instruments for personal publicity,” Shukla added.
Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh, who was chief minister during the 2013 Kumbh, too had launched a self-publicity blitz using the event as a pretext.
Keen to gain political brownie points by setting records, Adityanath has claimed that the footfall this year would be 40 crore. The 2013 footfall on Akhilesh’s watch was 12 crore.
Observers said the self-glorification drive was part of Adityanath’s project to remain in voters’ minds till the 2027 Assembly elections, where a victory could become “his passport to the chair of Prime Minister”.
District magistrate Ravindra Kumar underlined the security arrangements, referring to how Modi had called this Mela the “Digital Mahakumbh”.
“We have deployed 50,000 police at the Mahakumbh besides the paramilitary forces. There are 3,000 CCTVs and 2,750 drone cameras. We have developed parking areas across 18,000 hectares outside the Mahakumbh area. Over 1.5 lakh toilets have been erected,” he said. “We are also using AI for Mela security.”
Director-general of police Prashant Kumar said: “We are making arrangements for visits by dignitaries but the ordinary devotees too would receive every facility as well as respect. The Mela is for the sadhus and devotees — they are always our top priority.”