Skip to main content

Was Kumbh advanced by a year to please astrologers, setting aside pandemic danger?

By Mohan Guruswamy
Kumbh Melas are held every 12 years. The actual due date for the ‘current’ Kumbh Mela at Haridwar was 2022, not 2021. Because the last Haridwar Kumbh Mela had been held in 2010.
So how did it get advanced by one whole lethal year? Let me tell you the reason.
It was ‘advanced’ by a year, to 2021, because the ‘astrological configurations’ of the ‘Sun entering Aries’ and ‘Jupiter entering Aquarius’ were available for 2021 this time. This happens once every 83 years, and it happens because of the need to reconcile astrological configuration charts to calendrical years. The calculative arcana of this ‘adjustment’ is beyond my capacity. I suggest none of you try it if you don’t want to give yourselves a headache.
So, not only did the Government of India, and the Government of Uttarakhand NOT cancel the Kumbh Mela, which they could easily have done, so as not to endanger the lives of millions of people by causing a super-spreader event for Covid 19; they also need not have let it take place this year at all in the first place, simply because this is the 11th, not the 12th year, since the last Kumbh Mela at Haridwar. They could have used this time to create the conditions where holding an event like the Kumbh Mela could have made some kind of sense, maybe, in 2022.
Instead, they did much worse. They, in consultation with that circus of clowns of the Hindu religion called the Akhil Bharatiya Akhada Parishad, ‘advanced’ the date from 2022 to 2021, knowing fully the dangers of pandemic, because some ‘astrological mumbo-jumbo’ told them that this was desirable. Because, you know, ‘Aastha/Faith’, that beloved article that makes the Supreme Court reward criminal trespass with a building plan, is also what makes the Governments of India and Uttarakhand do what they must to put peoples lives in danger on a grand scale.
Epidemiological studies always indicate that a possible second wave of infection is worse than the first. The Kumbh Mela is a historically documented site of the spread of contagion. You don’t need to have a PhD in Public Health to guess that an occasion like a Kumbh Mela Shahi Snan is a possible epicentre of a second contagious wave, which given the conditions of the Kumbh Mela, would most likely turn into a Tsunami of disease. That is exactly what has happened. Everybody in India, and frankly, in the world, is now at risk because of the result of some key stupid decisions by some key idiotic men. The Chinese government may have been responsible for a degree of understatement of actual figures at the early stages of the Covid 19 pandemic, but they took steps to contain it, and they certainly did nothing to amplify it. The regime that rules India has taken steps that have led to a huge rise in infections. This could have been avoided. Unlike the Chinese regime, this time, the Indian state cannot even pretend to say that it was caught unawares by the outbreak of a disease. Not only was it in command over all the knowledge necessary to know that there could be a second wave, but also, by letting the Kumbh Mela happen, by actually making it happen during a time when it did not even ‘need’ to happen, it actively took steps to create the conditions for a second wave. History will judge the men who rule this country today, and the holy men at their side, as a bunch of cynical mass murderers, or as dangerously deluded fools.
And all this, when the vaccination programme has barely gotten underway. There is no way by which anybody can justify the holding of mass gatherings of the scale that the Kumbh Mela entails at this time. The same goes for elections, which an Election Commission possessed of a spine and a brain could have easily insisted on postponing. But that was not to be.
So, have Kumbh Melas been advanced by a year before? Yes they have, in 1938, and in 1855, when similar ‘astrological configurations’ were in place.
Are we living in 1938, or in 1855? Was there an airborne viral epidemic around in 1938? There was actually a cholera epidemic around in 1855, and the Kumbh Mela that year did amplify the disease hugely. This people knew even then, though their understanding of epidemics was much less than it is today. The International Sanitary Convention of 1866 in Istanbul - specifically looked at reports of disease spread from the Kumbh Mela locus.
Was this, now, in 2021, when we know so much more about disease than we did in 1938 or 1855, not an occasion for a rational, sane, government to use all its persuasive power to convince a bunch of self-appointed ‘holy men’ that maybe, just for this time, they could put ‘astrology’ in abeyance, and rely simply on the calendrical calculation of a twelve year interval between two consecutive Kumbh Melas?
Was this not one key instance where there could have been a rational, sensible dialogue between ordinary reason and faith - that could have helped save lives? Perhaps, given that all the astrologers of India put together are unable to come up with an explanation, based on their ‘discipline’, for how and why a pandemic of this nature broke out when it did, this would be a little bit of a reason to let ‘astrology’ take a bit of a back seat, just for a while, especially when it comes to the taking of major policy decisions like whether or not to commit government support to a super-spreader event.
No. How could it have been so. There are elections to win, and the support of Holy Circus Clowns is crucial, as ever, as are the opportunities to make money off contracts and advertising revenue for an event that can hold millions captive to disease and to mammon.
These, dear Indians, dear Hindus, are your leaders and your holy men. They are your mirrors and your death-wish.
Best of Luck. The stars, indifferent in heaven, feel no need to laugh at you. Frankly, no matter what you think about them, they don’t even fucking care about you.
COVID-19 vaccines go through many tests for safety and effectiveness and are then monitored closely.
---
This article was posted on the author's Facebook timeline

Comments

Wonderful article. Thank you for helping me know the fact of calculation of every 83 years. But please let me know where from you come to know about Kumbh Mela of 1855?

TRENDING

The golden crop: How turmeric is transforming women's lives in tribal India

By Vikas Meshram*   When the lush green fields of turmeric sway in the tribal belt of southern Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat, it is not merely a spice crop — it is the golden glow of self-reliance. In villages where even basic spices once had to be bought from the market, the very soil today is yielding a prosperity that has transformed the lives of thousands of families. At the heart of this transformation is the initiative of Vaagdhara, which has linked turmeric with livelihoods, nutrition, and village self-governance — gram swaraj.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Was Netaji forced to alter face, die in obscurity in USSR in 1975? Was he so meek?

  By Rajiv Shah   This should sound almost hilarious. Not only did Subhas Chandra Bose not die in a plane crash in Taipei, nor was he the mysterious Gumnami Baba who reportedly passed away on 16 September 1985 in Ayodhya, but we are now told that he actually died in 1975—date unknown—“in oblivion” somewhere in the former Soviet Union. Which city? Moscow? No one seems to know.

Love letters in a lifelong war: Babusha Kohli’s resistance in verse

By Ravi Ranjan*  “War does not determine who is right—only who is left.” Bertrand Russell’s words echo hauntingly in our times, and few contemporary Hindi poets embody this truth as profoundly as Babusha Kohli. Emerging from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, Kohli has carved a unique space in literature by weaving together tenderness, protest, and philosophy across poetry, prose, and cinema. Her work is not merely artistic expression—it is resistance, refuge, and a call for peace.

Authoritarian destruction of the public sphere in Ecuador: Trumpism in action?

By Pilar Troya Fernández  The situation in Ecuador under Daniel Noboa's government is one of authoritarianism advancing on several fronts simultaneously to consolidate neoliberalism and total submission to the US international agenda. These are not isolated measures, but rather a coordinated strategy that combines job insecurity, the dismantling of the welfare state, unrestricted access to mining, the continuation of oil exploitation without environmental considerations, the centralization of power through the financial suffocation of local governments, and the systematic criminalization of all forms of opposition and popular organization.

Echoes of Vietnam and Chile: The devastating cost of the I-A Axis in Iran

​ By Ram Puniyani  ​The recent joint military actions by Israel and the United States against Iran have been devastating. Like all wars, this conflict is brutal to its core, leaving a trail of human suffering in its wake. The stated pretext for this aggression—the brutality of the Ayatollah Khamenei regime and its nuclear ambitions—clashes sharply with the reality of the diplomatic landscape. Iran had expressed a willingness to remain at the negotiating table, signaling a readiness to concede points emerging from dialogue. 

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Rajiv Shah  Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

False claim? What Venezuela is witnessing is not surrender but a tactical retreat

By Manolo De Los Santos  The early morning hours of January 3, 2026, marked an inflection point in Venezuela and Latin America’s centuries-long struggle for self-determination and independence. Operation Absolute Resolve, ordered by the Trump administration, constituted the most brutal and direct military assault on a sovereign state in the region in recent memory. In a shocking operation that left hundreds dead, President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores were illegally kidnapped from Venezuelan soil and transported to the United States, where they now face fabricated charges in a New York federal detention facility. In the two months since this act of war, a torrent of speculation has emerged from so-called experts and pundits across the political spectrum. This has followed three main lines: One . The operation’s success indicated treason at the highest levels of the Bolivarian Revolution. Two . Acting President Delcy Rodríguez and the remaining leadership have abandone...

The price of silence: Why Modi won’t follow Shastri, appeal for sacrifice

By Arundhati Dhuru, Sandeep Pandey*  ​In 1965, as India grappled with war and a crippling food crisis, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri faced a United States that used wheat shipments under the PL-480 agreement as a lever to dictate Indian foreign policy. Shastri’s response remains legendary: he appealed to the nation to skip one meal a day. Millions of middle-class households complied, choosing temporary hunger over the sacrifice of national dignity. Today, India faces a modern equivalent in the energy sector, yet the leadership’s response stands in stark contrast to that era of self-reliance.