60 crore in Mahakumbh? It's hype with eye on UP polls: Keen BJP supporter in Amit Shah's constituency

By Rajiv Shah

As the Mahakumbh drew to a close, during my daily walk, I met a veteran BJP supporter—a neighbor with whom we would often share dinner in a group. An amicable person, the first thing he asked me, as he was about to take the lift to his flat, was, "How many people do you think must have participated in the holy dip?" He then stopped by to talk—which we did for a full half-hour, cutting into my walk time.

I had already done some analysis by uploading drone-taken images to two different AI sites, so I counter-questioned, "Sixty crore seems highly exaggerated, but what is your take?"

This gentleman, who had just returned from a walk and had bought a Hindi newspaper about 500 meters from our housing society, replied, "Absolutely… but I have made my calculations."

And this is what he told me: The UP government "appears to have counted those who live in Prayagraj and bathe twice a day… Let me make a rough estimate. That would mean that, daily, approximately 30 to 40 lakh people take a 'holy dip' in the Ganga at home."

Then he continued, "I added those who come from outside. They would stay in the city for at least a full day and take a holy dip at least twice. If they stay longer, they take a dip two more times a day. So, each time these people bathe, they must have been counted. That is how they arrived at 60 crore."

But how many people does he actually believe took the holy dip? He asked me directly, "Did you go to the Mahakumbh?"

I said, "No."

He asked the same question to another person who had joined our conversation, who also replied in the negative. Then he continued, "I also didn't go... There are 2,000 people living in our housing society. I doubt if more than 10-15% of them would have gone to the Mahakumbh."

Only 10-15%? Ours is a largely pro-BJP housing society, part of Union Home Minister Amit Shah's constituency. Still, so few? I posed this question, and he replied, "Yes… You see, it's a political hype created by UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath with an eye on the upcoming UP elections, scheduled for October this year. Not without reason, there is a political slugfest around the Mahakumbh."

Being from UP himself and knowing every bit of Allahabad (now Prayagraj) quite well, he explained, "If Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav, even after taking the holy dip, called the Ganga water dirty and warned that it might cause illness or death, Yogi hit back, saying vultures get only dead bodies and pigs get dirt—making Akhilesh furious."

He continued, "My rough estimate is that no more than 30 crore people have been to the Mahakumbh—half of Yogi’s estimate. Most of the attendees are from areas neighboring Prayagraj, mainly from UP, followed by Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttarakhand."

Explaining the "political hype" around the Mahakumbh, this BJP supporter said, "The claim that this Mahakumbh is a once-in-144-years event was widely propagated, attracting people from across India. Even people from faraway South India reached the Mahakumbh in large numbers… Frankly, I don't understand this 144-year claim. It seems like a political move with an eye on the UP elections."

I used two AI sites to estimate the number of people in drone images of the Mahakumbh—a method reportedly used by the Yogi government to justify the 60 crore estimate, which is nearly half of India's population.

Using different methodologies, the first AI estimated that, assuming a density of 3 to 5 persons per square meter, the number of people in the image must be between 18,000 and 30,000.

Another AI estimate, based on a different image, identified three zones—high, medium, and low density—where there were approximately 33,750, 32,400, and 18,750 people, respectively, bringing the headcount to 84,900.

I then uploaded a third drone image, and this is what the AI told me:

"Based on refined segmentation, approximately 17.25% of the visible area is occupied by the crowd. Given an estimated real-world area of 1 square kilometer (1,000,000 square meters), the occupied crowd area is around 172,500 square meters."

It added: "Using a density estimate of 4–6 people per square meter, the refined headcount estimate ranges between 690,000 to 1.03 million people. This refined estimate accounts for a more accurate segmentation of the crowd."

Comments

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.

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.

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.

Search This Blog