ISBN10: 0195338944, ISBN13: 9780195338942, [publisher: Oxford University Press Inc, New York] Hardcover Hardcover. Today the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, India, is a major Hindu religious pilgrimage and the largest religious gathering in the world. In 2001, according to the government of Uttar Pradesh, 30 million pilgrims were drawn to the confluence of the rivers Ganga and Yamuna on the most auspicious day for bathing. In an impressive feat of organization and administration, the first mela of the new millennium was managed to the overwhelming satisfaction of most, with animpressive health and safety record. The loudest complaint had to do with the intrusive presence of the media. Journalists, largely representing foreign media outlets, had swarmed to the mela, intent onbroadcasting to a global audience sensational images of naked (or wet-sari-clad) Indians taking part in "ancient" religious rituals. Resistance to foreign interference with the mela has roots that go back 200 years. The British colonial state and the colonized had different ideas about what the Kumbh Mela represented: for the former, it was a potentially dangerous gathering that demanded tight regulation and control, but for the latter it was a sacred sphere in whichforeign domination and interference were intolerable. In this book Kama Maclean examines this tension and the manner in which it was negotiated by each side. She asks why and how the colonial state tried tomanipulate the mela and, ...
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