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Festival with over 400 million people BEGINS today in India [Photos]

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Festival with over 400 million people
Festival with over 400 million people BEGINS today in India

A festival with over 400 million people has begun in India

Large crowds of Hindu pilgrims in India bathed in sacred waters on Monday, January 13, 2025 as the Kumbh Mela festival opened, with organisers expecting 400 million people.

Festival with over 400 million people BEGINS today in India
Festival with over 400 million people BEGINS today in India

The festival is believed to be the largest gathering of humanity.

The millennia-old Kumbh Mela, a show of religious piety and ritual bathing – and a logistical challenge of staggering proportions – is held at the site where the Ganges, Yamuna, and mythical Saraswati rivers meet.

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In the cool pre-dawn gloom, pilgrims surged forward to begin bathing in the waters.

Kumbh Mela festival in India
Kumbh Mela festival in India

“I feel great joy,” said Surmila Devi, 45. “For me, it’s like bathing in nectar.”

“As a Hindu, this is an unmissable occasion,” said Reena Rai, a 38-year-old businesswoman, who travelled around 1,000 kilometres from Madhya Pradesh state to take part in the festival, which runs from Monday until February 26.

Saffron-robed monks and na..ked ash-smeared ascetics roamed the crowds offering blessings to devotees, many of whom had walked for weeks to reach the site.

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The massive congregation is also an occasion for India’s Hindu nationalist government to burnish its credentials.

Kumbh Mela festival in India
Kumbh Mela festival in India

Prime Minister Narendra Modi called it a “divine occasion”, that brings together “countless people in a sacred confluence of faith, devotion and culture”.

Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu monk and Uttar Pradesh’s chief minister, welcomed devotees to “experience unity in diversity” at the “world’s largest spiritual and cultural gathering”.

Source: AFP

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