Rainbow shades of faith on the banks of the Ganga

HARIDWAR - Faith has taken on every shade and meaning on the banks of the Ganga here with boundaries between caste, creed, age and colour blurring at India’s biggest religious gathering - the Maha Kumbh - often dubbed the world’s biggest show of faith.

For Hardy, an engineer from Hamburg in northern Germany, “the river was refreshing”.

The tall German bathed in the river Wednesday evening, a day before the Maha Snan (big bath) according to the Hindu almanac. He observed all the Hindu rituals. A priest prayed with flowers and vermillion as Hardy dipped into the river to emerge minutes later with a happy smile on his face.

“I thought the water would be colder since it comes down the Himalayas. I had heard about the Maha Kumbh but this is the first time I am visiting India. My visit to Asia coincided with the fair,” he told IANS as the priest smeared his forehead with vermillion.

A 50-year-old Austrian psychotherapist, who refused to divulge his name, “felt that the Maha Kumbh encapsulated the essence of Hindu spirituality.”

“I love the ambience. I was in Varanasi two years ago, but this is the first time I am taking part in Kumbh rituals. I often go on pilgrimages,” said the counsellor, who camped on the banks of Brahma Kund from 10 p.m., two hours before the auspicious hour for the bath.

But the psychotherapist, who works with drug addicts, rued that the “tour operators were fleecing the foreigners in Haridwar”.

“I have to pay double the amount everywhere, even in hotels. I wish someone would do something about it,” he told IANS.

For the thousands of sadhus who squatted on the edge of the concrete embankment damming the river at Har-ki-Pauri, the fair was an opportunity to “spread the word of god and the message of healthy living”.

“I have brought the ’sankalp’ (pledges) of my ‘bhaktas’ (devotees) to the Kumbh Mela. It is said a holy dip cleanses and alleviates troubles and my devotees want me to pray for them when I bathe,” Mohan Das, an ascetic belonging to the Digambar Akhara, a Vaishnav sect based in Udhampur (Jammu and Kashmir), told IANS.

Das said he would light a ceremonial fire after the bath and “consign the sins of the mortals and ills of this world in it after midnight”.

“After all, this is kalyug (the age of darkness) and Maha Kumbh is necessary to clean and deliver humanity to light,” he said.

Karnail Singh and Baba Bhaironath, two Shaivite ascetics from Haryana, who huddled in their woollens, felt “that the weather has been playing a bad sport”.

“We were in Ujjain (for the Kumbh Mela there) three years ago. But this year it is colder,” the duo said.

According to them, “the biggest sin in the world today was killing humans and animals but praying at the fair would put an end to it”.

The Jan 15 solar eclipse has had an impact on the fair, said Yogi Shovanath Ji and Yogi Sripalnath Ji.

More people should have come. But many have gone to Kurukshetra to witness the eclipse and they will return to the fair Jan 16, the seers told IANS.

They have come to the fair as part of a fraternity of six holy men from the order of Goraknath — an avatar of Lord Shiva — with ashrams in Haryana and Madhya Pradesh.

Asked about the significance of the fair, one of them said: “It gives nirvana to the bathers. Their souls are purified.”

If the sadhus and the foreign tourists basked in the spirit of the fair, groups of Indian pilgrims juggled globalisation with spirituality.

A group of 20 Gujarati pilgrims from Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar and London were well stocked with packets of potato chips and cans of Coca Cola.

“We visit every Kumbh Mela and come to Haridwar on the new moon once a month to bathe in the river four times. We are devout people,” the leader of the group, Dansingh Parmer, told IANS.

A young member of the entourage, who was being initiated into the Maha Kumbh rituals, said he was “enjoying the experience” - between mouthfuls of potato chips and gulps of Coke.