The BJP’s propaganda machine spun out an endless well-hyped narrative on the Maha Kumbh 2025. Newspaper ads, celebrities, photo ops, and TV visuals accompanied by orchestral devotional music. All of it was designed to showcase this year’s Kumbh as somehow an epochal, civilisation-defining event that has apparently taken place for “the first time in 144 years”.
I covered the Maha Kumbh in both 2001 and 2013, the first time when I was a print reporter with Outlook magazine, and the second time in 2013 when I worked in television. Both times, I witnessed firsthand what a meaningful spiritual journey the Kumbh can be. I saw that the festival is really about an intimate communion between individual pilgrims and the river Ganga. This time, the hype, marketing, VIPs with their entourages, religious tourism, and ostentatious publicity distracted from the festival’s quiet contemplative character.
