ABSTRACT
In most places, a festival procession led by several thousand heavily armed, ash-smeared naked men would bring immediate concern, if not alarm and terror. Yet such processions are the climactic moment at the Kumbha Mela, a Hindu bathing festival drawing a pan-Indian and increasingly global audience. Widely regarded as the world’s largest religious gathering, the Kumbha Mela is celebrated at four Hindu pilgrimage sites – Hardwar, Prayag1 (near Allahabad), Ujjain, and Nasik – and usually returns to a site after twelve years.2 Each site’s festival time is primarily determined by the position of Jupiter, which takes about twelve years to move through the zodiac. Each festival lasts over a month, during which pilgrims come to bathe in the sacred rivers, and each site also has three major bathing days, marked by these dramatic festival processions.3 The Hardwar and Prayag Melas have historically been the most important – with Prayag drawing the largest crowds – and these sites also have an Ardha (‘Half ’) Kumbha Mela between the ‘full’ Kumbha Melas.4
