(13 Jan 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Prayagraj – 13 January 2025
1. Various of people in water
2. People by bank of river
3. People drying off after bathing
4. Man by water
5. Zoom in of people in water
6. Man chanting while sitting down
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Swami Ramchan, priest from Florida:
"I have especially come for the Maha Kumbh. There was once upon a time that I was always reading about this Maha Kumbh and there was a very strong urge about three weeks ago to drop everything I was doing in the US and just come straight here."
8. Mid of people gathered
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Swami Ramchan, priest from Florida:
"This place has existence of death. Many people are afraid of death today but today they go and take a holy bath to remind themselves that this body will not be here forever."
10. Mid of people gathered
STORYLINE:
Millions of Hindu devotees, mystics and holy men and women from all across India flocked to the northern city of Prayagraj on Monday to kickstart the Maha Kumbh festival, which is being touted as the world’s largest religious gathering.
Over about the next six weeks, Hindu pilgrims with gather at the confluence of three sacred rivers — the Ganges, the Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati — where they will take part in elaborate rituals, hoping to begin a journey to achieve Hindu philosophy’s ultimate goal: the release from the cycle of rebirth.
Hindus venerate rivers, and none more so than the Ganges and the Yamuna.
The faithful believe that a dip in their waters will cleanse them of their past sins and end their process of reincarnation, particularly on auspicious days.
The most propitious of these days occur in cycles of 12 years during a festival called the Maha Kumbh Mela, or pitcher festival.
The festival is a series of ritual baths by Hindu sadhus, or holy men, and other pilgrims at the confluence of three sacred rivers that dates to at least medieval times.
Hindus believe that the mythical Saraswati river once flowed from the Himalayas through Prayagraj, meeting there with the Ganges and the Yamuna.
Bathing takes place every day, but on the most auspicious dates, naked, ash-smeared monks charge toward the holy rivers at dawn.
Many pilgrims stay for the entire festival, observing austerity, giving alms and bathing at sunrise every day.
At least 400 million people — more than the population of the United States — are expected in Prayagraj over the next 45 days, according to officials.
That is around 200 times the 2 million pilgrims that arrived in the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia for the annual Hajj pilgrimage last year.
The festival is a big test for Indian authorities to showcase the Hindu religion, tourism and crowd management.
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