(Images: BBC/Wildstar Films Ltd)
In a new one-hour BBC Factual production, for BBC One and iPlayer, Amol Rajan explores the biggest gathering on Earth – the Maha Kumbh Mela Festival in Northern India.
The journalist and presenter s up to 500 million pilgrims from all over the globe who come together for the world’s largest religious gathering. The festival, which takes place every 12 years, is the largest in human history, and this year's Kumbh is a once in a lifetime event, due to a special alignment of the planets in the solar system, which last occurred 144 years ago. Pilgrims numbering more than the combined populations of the US and UK gather in an area the size of Manhattan, at the confluence of three sacred rivers, to purify themselves in the waters and gain salvation for themselves and their families.
This is a profoundly personal journey for Amol, who was born in India to a practising Hindu family. Amol has struggled to come to with the death of his father three years ago and hopes that reconnecting with his birthplace, at one of Hinduism's most important religious events, could help him process his grief.
IC
Interview with Amol Rajan
What is the Kumbh Mela?
The Kumbh Mela is a Hindu pilgrimage, which is the biggest gathering of humanity anywhere ever, where people go bathing in a sacred river. Every 12 years is a particularly special one because of the alignment of Jupiter with the Moon, the Sun and Earth, and this year was the 12th one, so it was 144 years. In the Kumbh Mela you have certain auspicious days, and I went to bathe in the river Ganges and the Yamuna, which are these two very holy rivers, on the most auspicious day for 144 years. But the thing is, it was me and 500 million other people. And just to give you a sense of what that means, on any one day in a makeshift pop-up mega city, only about 15 square miles, about the size of Winchester, the entire population of Britain, 70 million people try to get into this one patch of earth, and over the course of 45 days, 500 million people, one-and-a-half times the size of America, are all trying to do exactly the same thing. So, the Kumbh Mela is busy, it's holy, and it's very powerful.
What made you want to go to the Kumbh Mela, and why now?
I'm Indian. I grew up in England, but I was born in India, I've got Indian heritage, I'm from a Hindu family, and I've always had this deep fascination with India and particularly with the biggest event in human history. If you look at the pictures of Kumbh Mela, when it's come around, there are more people in one place than ever before, anywhere, and they're all trying to get to this one spot, and that sounds absolutely terrifying, but also absolutely fascinating. So partly being Indian and wanting to reconnect with my Indian heritage, which was a big, big, exciting prospect, but also my dad died three years ago, and I've kind of avoided thinking about him and thinking about India, because when I thought about India, I thought about him. And there comes a point when you're going through grief and you're trying to kind of grow again and sort of renew your purpose in life, where you think, “I've got to stop avoiding this”, and I thought that if I went to the biggest pilgrimage in the history of the world and tried, along with tens of millions of other people, to jump in the holy water, that'd be quite a good way of forcing myself to think about my dad and also to do what you can do at the Kumbh Mela, which is you can release his spirit from the eternal cycle of death and rebirth. Sounds pretty cool, doesn't it?
What do you think you undertaking the pilgrimage would have meant to your dad?
My dad would have loved it. I think he had a very intense Hindu upbringing and inheritance and faith, but he was someone who was willing to ask pretty difficult questions about whether or not all of the tenets of Hinduism are true. But the Kumbh Mela was this enormous part of modern Indian history and if I'd said to my dad that I was going, he'd have probably said two things. The first is, “What about your hygiene?” Because my dad was keen on hygiene, which is fair enough, and I've certainly inherited that. But the other thing is, he would have said, “Make the most of it.” And I don't know whether my dad would have fully believed the deep Hindu belief, which makes hundreds of millions of pilgrims go to the Kumbh Mela, which is that you can, by bathing in those cosmic waters at that special auspicious time, emancipate yourself from the endless cycle of death, birth and rebirth, which is so fundamental to Hinduism, but a little part of him would have liked it, and a little part of him would have liked the idea of me doing it on his behalf.
As an atheist, what did you hope to gain from going to the Kumbh Mela on a spiritual level?
I think it's perfectly possible to be both an atheist and spiritual. I think when people talk about being spiritual or the spirit or the soul, they're talking about the immaterial part of ourselves. And I think I'm quite spiritual in that I do kind of think about that immaterial part of life all the time; I basically call it love. I grew up Hindu, and I think it's very possible to retain a fascination with a culture and a civilization even if you discard or reject some of its fundamental beliefs. And I kind of think I'm an atheist because I’m basically a bit of a sceptic, you know? I ask if things are true. And I think the most interesting question about pilgrimages and the Kumbh Mela particularly, which is the biggest pilgrimage in the history of the world, is not, is what they believe true, it's why do they come? And I think they come because religion and ancient civilizations have these grand narratives, these massive stories, these epic kind of fictions which help us understand what it is to be human, and so even though I'm an atheist, I kind of believe that religions answer enduring human needs in a way that atheistic thought doesn't, but that atheists can learn from.
What did you find most challenging about the journey?
I think there were two things that were incredibly tough about this journey. One was physical and the other was emotional. At any one time you are essentially with about 70 million people - the population of Britain - in a small, makeshift, temporary megacity about 15 miles squared. It's crowded. Everyone has got fires. It's noisy. There are tannoys going off all day, every day, and the sensory overload is really overwhelming. You really don't sleep. And so physically it's pretty exhausting, even before, you try and head to the water. And a lot of people will know that there was a crush on the most auspicious day, where 30 people were tragically reported to have died and I was just yards away when the horror took place. The physical terror for us came after that, do we stay put near the crush and potentially get crushed, or do we try to make it back to our camp? And we made a particular decision, and the journey that followed, where we're trying to wade through these rivers of people, is the most physically terrifying thing I've ever done.
The emotionally toughest part was dealing with my grief. One way you deal with grief is that you shut these people out of your life, this person who's been a big part of your life, like my dad, you kind of actively avoid thinking about them and you kind of build up this guilt, but you avoid doing it because it's painful, because you miss them. And in this film, as people will see in this pilgrimage, I really forced myself to confront my dad. I thought about him all the time, I did undertake a very special ceremony, which is about trying to release his spirit, and that felt like a really profound final act of service for a son to do for his dear dad. And I think you can believe in the power of that act of duty and believe in the value of that act of service, even if you're not religious.
What did you learn about Hinduism that maybe you didn't know before, and that you might continue to use or reflect on throughout the rest of your life?
Hinduism is older than the Abrahamic faiths. It goes back to these scriptures, the ancient Vedic texts, which are just thousands of years older than, for instance, the Bible or the Talmud or the Quran, and that sense of being kind of invited back into this very, very ancient civilization is a really powerful thing. As you get older, you think less about the future and more about the past and feeling some kind of genetically or culturally connected to the very distant past, it’s quite exciting. There's a real power in undertaking rituals that millions of people have done for thousands of years. So that was one thing I really believed in.
There are other bits of Hinduism which I rejected as a teenager and which I remain unpersuaded by. I really immersed myself in Hindu faith, and there are lots of ideas which are very sacred to Hindus, for instance, the idea of moksha, that you can step off that endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth, or the idea of reincarnation. And I really like the idea of reincarnation, but I don't yet believe it. And there is a bit of a tension, and conflict in my head between the Hindu son who wants to believe this stuff and wants to believe that he's helped his dad escape some eternal cycle and the Western journalistic sceptic who can't help but ask, “Is that true?” So people can watch this film and they can make up their own mind. And maybe the point of life is not to have the correct answer, but just to ask the right question.
Did anything particularly surprise you while you were there?
If you're someone who's grown up atheist, seeing people who are so deeply animated by the fervent belief that supernatural forces are among us, and that they will get their reward in heaven, and that God exists, it's quite hard to understand. It gets easier to understand when you see tens of millions of people doing it. And I think the fervour, the ion, the depth of faith that these people had was kind of shocking to me. You see people with no material possessions, very old ladies, very young people literally carrying all that they own, and they walk tens or hundreds of miles from an impoverished part of India to this sacred Sangam, this confluence of these rivers, and I ask myself, “Why do they do it?” And I think they do it because they really believe the story that Hinduism tells them about what they'll get to and seeing the power of that belief, I'd say it's not surprising, but it is shocking. And then you leave and you reflect that actually, for most of humanity, religious fervour and religious faith are part of their daily bread. And I, as a modern secular, sceptical atheist, I'm the aberration. You know, I'm the one who thinks I've got right and evidence and justice and truth on my side. But actually, those of us who don't believe in God and don't go on pilgrimages tend to be the anomaly.
Tell us about your dad.
My dad was my hero, totally and utterly. I revered him growing up as I did my beloved mum, and both him and my mum were from very, very, very poor, very, very big families. My dad was one of 11 from a very poor part of southeast India called Tamil Nadu, and he gave up everything to come to this country because he wanted a better life for his two sons. I always had this idea in my head that if I worked really hard, I'd be able to kind of pay him back, and then very suddenly, three years ago, he got pneumonia and he went into hospital, and he spent five dreadful weeks in intensive care, and he died. And this was really shocking to me because it was the first time I'd ever lost someone I'd loved. It's the first experience of grief I've ever been through and I really thought I was going to get the time with my dad to kind of say thank you. The grief that followed was the biggest emotional event I'd ever been through, much bigger than becoming a parent or indeed, having the four wonderful young kids I've had. And it's felt to me very much like, that was the end of the first part of my life, like a long childhood, and it was only when he died that I entered adulthood. I think that one of the things that I wanted to go to the Kumbh Mela to do, was to confront my grief, reconnect with my dad, but also to try and work out what the next 38 or 40 years of my life would have to do with the first half.
What do you want people to take from the documentary?
I think there are three things I want people to take away from this documentary. One is about grief, the other is about faith, and the final one is about family. Every grief is different and everyone grieves for somebody they've lost in a very unique way, but I do think there are certain rules about grief. I do think it does get easier over time, and I do think that sharing grief by talking about it, by connecting with other people that are aggrieved, is a really valuable thing. This documentary is a way of trying to grieve in public, not for vain reasons, but because I think there's something that people could learn from that.
The second thing is about faith. I think that what people say about the origins of the universe are more likely to be true if they're basing on the best science than the best religions, but I do think that religion answers enduring human needs in a way that secular thought sometimes struggles with and I think people of a secular disposition, could learn from spending time with people for whom those aren't the most important questions. There was just this sense, as I looked up at Jupiter, of being part of these mighty, magnificent forces, this kind of cosmic energy, which made you feel small, pious and humble, even though I'm an atheist, and I think I learned a lot about the power of faith in doing that.
The third thing, which is about family, is I really want people to meet my mum. I was born in India, came to this country when I was three, and we lived in a rather leafy part of West London on the River Thames. And I went back there with my mum, I really felt like I was kind of going from one river of my childhood to another of my adulthood making this programme, and the fact that I could start it by going back to my childhood home with my mum, made this film particularly powerful, and I think when people see her, they're going to love her nearly as much as me.
