Kumbh Mela
I first attended a Mela (religious fair) at Allahabad [Prayagraj] in 1997. Friends in Varanasi suggested that if I wanted to meet Hindu ascetics and gurus that it was the place to be. The train from Varanasi to Allahabad was wildly overcrowded and they literally lifted me onto it and into the crowd of mela attendees. After that first encounter, I followed the Kumbh Mela in 2001 virtually, and then attended another in 2013. In 2019, I returned for the Ardha Kumbh, along with 120 million other pilgrims. The Kumbh Mela has become the largest religious gathering on earth, wonderous in it scale and scope. It remains ‘the place to be’ to meet the ascetics and gurus of India.
The Kumbh Mela has drawn me in again and again. There is no other singular geography wherein one can witness the astonishing diversity of Hindu traditions. I am constantly in awe at its wonderous and sprawling streets. I feel as though I am constantly learning there, and always palpably aware of the vast depths of all that there is to learn. I am grateful to my friends in Varanasi and Allahabad, in the Mahanirvani Akhara, at the Hatha Yoga Project (SOAS), and in the Society for Pilgrimage Studies at the University of Allahabad for welcoming me in these extraordinary worlds.
In relation to the Kumbh Mela, I published the following related articles:
Lucia, Amanda. 2023. “Economies of Wonder: The Production of Spectacle at the Kumbh Melā,” pp. 197-222. In Wonder in South Asia: Histories, Aesthetics, and Ethics, edited by Tulasi Srinivas.
Lucia, Amanda. 2023. “The Kumbh Melā as Hyperobject: Sound, Scale, Nation, Environment.” pp. 386-399. In The Routledge Handbook of Material Religion, edited by S. Brent Plate, Pooyan Arab, and Jennifer Scheper Hughes.
Lucia, Amanda. 2016. “Festivals.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Hinduism, edited by Tracy Coleman, November 28.
I’ve also given the following related public talks:
2019. “Temporary Asceticisms: The Embodied Practices of Spiritual Tourism,” Society for Pilgrimage Studies Conference, University of Allahabad, Prayagraj, India.
2013. “Vectors of Religious Labor at the Kumbh Mela 2013,” Annual Conference on South Asia, Madison, WI.
2013. “Ascetic Discipline and the Kumbh Mela 2013,” Center for Ideas and Society Speaker Series, University of California-Riverside, Palm Desert Campus.
2013. “Ascetic Discipline and the Kumbh Mela,” Society for Pilgrimage Studies Conference, University of Allahabad, Prayagraj, India.
All photo credits: Amanda Lucia