Reports are now starting to come in detailing how Modi's refusal to ban large religious gatherings in India were the primary cause of the lethal COVID outbreak in that country.
Last year, when India had just several hundred coronavirus cases, the government swiftly imposed a nationwide lockdown. But as this year's Kumbh Mela, the Hindu religious festival, approached, India's government took no action-- and it ended up driving a massive uptick in COVID infections as cases skyrocketed across the country, according to local officials, religious leaders and media reports. The combination of an enormous wave of coronavirus cases and one of the biggest mass gatherings on the planet has fueled criticism that India's government should have curtailed the religious event or canceled it altogether.
The Kumbh Mela "may end up being the biggest super-spreader in the history of this pandemic," said Ashish Jha, dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University, in a recent interview with Indian news outlet The Wire. "It brought so many people together from across India." Pilgrims were obliged to present a negative coronavirus test, wear masks and observe social distancing, but such requirements were widely flouted and were unenforced by government officials.
Tirath Singh Rawat, the leader of the state where the Kumbh Mela took place and a member of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, urged devotees from all over the world to attend. "Nobody will be stopped in the name of COVID-19," he said in March. "We are sure the faith in God will overcome the fear of the virus."
Chandrama Das Tyagi, the head priest of a famous Hindu temple in the central Indian city of Bhopal, arrived at the festival on April 6 along with 25 of his followers. On April 12, he and more than 3 million others took part in one of the event's main rituals. That evening the 49-year-old came down with a fever. Two days later, he and a friend boarded an overnight train home, where he tested positive for coronavirus. Tyagi was admitted to the hospital as his symptoms worsened, and he died on April 29.
In the small town of Gyaraspur in central India, 60 of the 83 people who went to the festival tested positive upon their return, said Abbas Zaidi, a doctor and local health official. Some of those who returned were reluctant to be tested, Zaidi said, including the head priest of a well-known local temple. Zaidi went with a team of police officers to test the priest, whose results came back positive for the virus.
In Ahmedabad, a city in the western state of Gujarat, many pilgrims returned from the festival on trains. In one batch of travelers, about 10 percent of those tested came back positive for coronavirus, said Bhavin Solanki, a municipal medical health officer.
A famous Bollywood music composer tested positive for the virus a few days after returning to Mumbai from the religious festival. The 66-year-old died in late April. The former king and queen of Nepal also tested positive after attending the gathering.
In Uttarakhand, the state where the festival took place, infections surged beyond expectations. Before festival, the state was reporting 500 new cases a day. By the end of the month, that figure had soared to nearly 6,000. One in five of the doctors and paramedical staff deployed at the festival tested positive, said Arjun Senger, the event's health officer.
Unlike political rallies, the Kumbh Mela drew people from every corner of the country, allowing variants prevalent in one region to jump to different geographies. The infections also spread among the attendees, including the members of the akharas, or religious sects, that spearhead the event. Ravindra Puri, the secretary of the Niranjani Akhara, said that nine of the ascetics in his organization, all of them elderly, died after contracting covid-19. On April 15, the group announced that it was withdrawing from the gathering. The Kumbh Mela "will happen again," Puri said. "But people should not die."
Other religious leaders who took part in the Kumbh Mela said they had no regrets. A 73-year-old Hindu priest named Dharamdasji (whose sect sent hundreds of thousands of members to the gathering), said, "Covid will come and go. A festival for the gods cannot be stopped."
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