The Urn Festival

To Hindus, one of the holiest places in the universe is the city of Allahabad (pop. 332,295) in northern India. It is holy because it is one of the four spots where the urn of immortality dripped its nectar in the struggle between the gods and the demons. And it is also holy because it marks the confluence of three sacred rivers--the muddy Ganges, the blue Jumna and the invisible Sarasvati, which is supposed to flow underground. Every twelve years, the Hindus celebrate the Kumbh Mela (Urn Festival) at Allahabad, bathing in the waters of the three rivers to cleanse themselves of sin. Every six years there is a slightly smaller Urn Festival. Last week saw the climax of one of the six-year festivals, and perhaps the most unusual Allahabad had ever seen in the way of all-out organization.

The last festival, in 1954, was a major disaster; no fewer than 350 people were trampled to death and drowned, 200 were counted missing, and over 2,000 were injured. This year Indian authorities took elaborate pains to protect the zealous from their zeal.

Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims poured into the 15-square-mile site on special trains, buses, bullock carts, bicycles and on foot, the old and infirm often carried on younger men's backs. The crowd found one-way traffic patterns, with 200 mounted police and 3,000 other lathi-wielding cops to enforce them. On every road there were medical teams to inoculate them against cholera (though many needle-shy peasants managed to slip past). The festival area itself was sectioned off like the Chicago stockyards with bamboo fencing to keep crowds from clotting. Posted in special watchtowers, police tirelessly kept track of the human mass with binoculars and blared directions through 300 loudspeakers.

Police boats plied the river to rescue drowning pilgrims and pick up the usual bodies floating downstream from other cities. A half-mile Bailey bridge and two quarter-mile pontoon bridges were built to enable pilgrims to bathe on both sides of the river.

As dawn broke on the main day of the festival last week, 20,000 holy men--at least 1,000 of them naked and covered with ashes--made up a procession down to the river with banners and bugles, painted elephants and a brass band. "Jai, jai Ram [Glory to God]!" cried the marchers. Once in the water, they scrubbed themselves furiously and dunked their heads repeatedly--some carrying out elaborate ablutions, praying all the while to the rising sun and dodging the boats bringing other pilgrims out to the point where the rivers meet.

When it was all over, the exhausted authorities congratulated themselves on an Urn Festival like no other. Only one river boat had capsized, but its eleven pilgrims had all been rescued. And no one had been trampled to death.

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