NEW DELHI: Spirituality, politics and tourism: welcome to the Kumbh Mela, the world’s largest gathering of humanity, that begins next month in India.
During the Kumbh Mela, to be held in Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh, millions of pilgrims including naked, ash-smeared ascetics, will bathe at the confluence of the Ganges, the Yamuna, and a mythical third river, the Saraswati.
Devout Hindus believe that bathing in the waters of the Ganges absolves people of sins and bathing at the time of the Kumbh brings salvation from the cycle of life and death.
The government says about 100 million to 150 million people, including one million foreign tourists, are expected to attend over the eight-week festival period beginning on January 15, and the scale of the efforts to feed and house the pilgrims is immense.
Organizers are erecting temporary bridges, 600 mass kitchens, more than 100,000 portable toilets, and vast tents, each sleeping thousands of pilgrims at a time, in a pop-up city on the banks of the two rivers.
And yet, based on tradition, there shouldn’t be quite such a giant event next year — which is where politics and tourism promotion comes in.
The Kumbh Mela is traditionally held every three years in one of four cities along India’s sacred rivers, with one of the largest of those in Prayagraj. The next Kumbh Mela, meaning “festival of the pot,” was due to be held in the city in 2025.
But with a general election due by May in which the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) faces a tough contest, the northern state of Uttar Pradesh has transformed a smaller Ardh, or “half” Kumbh Mela, into a full version of the festival.
The BJP controls both the federal and the Uttar Pradesh governments.
And this “half Kumbh” may by some measures end up being one of the biggest Kumbhs yet because of the state’s massive promotional efforts, especially as Prayagraj – which until recently was known as Allahabad — is seen as the holiest of the four sites.
Besides the upcoming election, the promotion coincides with an international charm offensive to improve the image of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state of more than 220 million people with a reputation for poverty and violence.
But the state’s chief minister Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu monk who is close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and has an eye for publicity, has also been driving support for any event that celebrates the dominance of Hindu culture in India, and marginalizes the nation’s Muslim minority.
Place of sacrifice
It was Adityanath who in October renamed Allahabad, a city of six million where there are nearly 800,000 Muslims, as Prayagraj, from its ancient name of Prayag meaning “place of sacrifice” in Sanskrit.
Allahabad is a Muslim name given to the city by a Mughal emperor in 1575.
“It is part of a Hindu nationalist agenda and is very worrying to us,” said Zafaryab Jilani, a senior member of the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, that liaises with the government on Muslim affairs.
“There is no justification for changing these names.”
Neither side is expecting tensions to lead to violence during the festival, although a stampede at the last Kumbh Mela held in Allahabad in 2013, as it was then known, killed 42.
“Muslims have always respected the Kumbh. We will not challenge it in public,” Jilani said.
Officials do not expect clashes either, but have boosted the number of police on duty compared with previous events.
“People who are not involved will not come,” said a state official involved in the preparations. “This is not a problem for us.”
But he added: “To ensure security and safety, there will be five times the number of police officers compared to the previous Kumbh.”
Officials say the festival won’t be a “half” event by any means.
“This is the way we are taking it forward. There is nothing which is half,” said Awanish Kumar Awasthi, a senior official in charge of tourism in the Uttar Pradesh government.
The state government has promoted the Kumbh Mela at several tourism expositions in Europe, and has invited representatives of every country in the world to attend. Last Saturday, foreign diplomats visited Prayagraj to witness the set-up.
The festival has its roots in a Hindu tradition that says the god Vishnu wrested a golden pot containing the nectar of immortality from demons. In a 12-day fight for possession, four drops fell to earth, in the cities of Prayagraj, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nasik, who share the Kumbhs as a result.
Sacred and political: world’s largest religious festival to kick off in India
Sacred and political: world’s largest religious festival to kick off in India
- About 100 million to 150 million people, including one million foreign tourists, are expected to attend over the eight-week festival period
- The Kumbh Mela is traditionally held every three years in one of four cities along India’s sacred rivers
UN approves new AU force to take on Al-Shabab in Somalia
UN: The UN Security Council on Friday gave the green light to a new African Union force in Somalia that is meant to take on the Islamist armed group Al-Shabab, with the soldiers due to deploy in January.
The resolution was adopted by 14 of the Council’s 15 member states, while the United States abstained due to reservations about funding.
It provides for the replacement of the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS), whose mandate ends on December 31, by the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM).
Somalia is one of the world’s poorest countries, enduring decades of civil war, a bloody insurgency by the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab, and frequent climate disasters.
Representatives from Somalia and its western neighbor Ethiopia were invited to participate in the council’s meeting, although they were not allowed to vote.
“We emphasize that the current AUSSOM troops allocations are completed through bilateral agreements,” said the Somali representative, adding 11,000 troops were currently pledged.
On Monday, Egypt’s foreign minister announced his country would take part in the new force.
Tensions flared in the Horn of Africa after Ethiopia signed a maritime deal in January with the breakaway region of Somaliland, pushing Mogadishu closer to Addis Ababa’s regional rival Cairo.
This month, Turkiye brokered a deal to end the nearly year-long bitter dispute between Somalia and Ethiopia, although Ethiopian troops would not be involved in the new AU force.
Burundi will not be taking part in the new force either, a Burundian military source told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The text adopted by the UN Security Council provides for the possibility of using a mechanism that it created last year, under which an African force deployed with the green light of the UN can be up to 75 percent financed by the UN.
“In our view, the conditions have not been met for immediate transition to application of” that measure, US representative Dorothy Shea said, justifying her country’s abstention.
Trump asks Supreme Court to delay TikTok ban so he can weigh in after he takes office
- The brief from Trump said he opposes banning TikTok at this junction
President-elect Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Friday to pause the potential TikTok ban from going into effect until his administration can pursue a “political resolution” to the issue.
The request came as TikTok and the Biden administration filed opposing briefs to the court, in which the company argued the court should strike down a law that could ban the platform by Jan. 19 while the government emphasized its position that the statute is needed to eliminate a national security risk.
“President Trump takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute. Instead, he respectfully requests that the Court consider staying the Act’s deadline for divestment of January 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case,” said Trump’s amicus brief, which supported neither party in the case.
The filings come ahead of oral arguments scheduled for Jan. 10 on whether the law, which requires TikTok to divest from its China-based parent company or face a ban, unlawfully restricts speech in violation of the First Amendment.
Earlier this month, a panel of three federal judges on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously upheld the statute, leading TikTok to appeal the case to the Supreme Court.
The brief from Trump said he opposes banning TikTok at this junction and “seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office.”
Senegal PM seeks to repeal contested amnesty law
- Sonko’s government pledged earlier this month to investigate dozens of deaths resulting from the political violence between 2021 and 2024
DAKAR: Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko said Friday that his government would submit legislation to repeal a law by former president Macky Sall granting amnesty for deadly political violence.
The controversial amnesty was granted just before March 2024 elections as Sall sought to calm protests sparked by his last-minute postponement of the vote in the traditionally stable West African country.
Critics say the move was to shield perpetrators of serious crimes, including homicides, committed during three years of political tensions between February 2021 and February 2024.
But it also allowed Sonko, a popular opposition figure, to stand in the elections after court convictions had made him ineligible, as well as Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who eventually won the presidency.
Sonko’s government pledged earlier this month to investigate dozens of deaths resulting from the political violence between 2021 and 2024.
“In addition to putting compensation for victims into the budget, a draft law will be submitted to your august Assembly to repeal the March 6, 2024 amnesty so that light may be shed and responsibilities determined on whatever side they may lie,” Sonko said in a highly awaited policy speech to lawmakers.
“It’s not a witch hunt and even less vengeance ... It’s justice, the foundation without which social peace cannot be built,” Sonko said.
Sonko’s speech also laid out plans for the next five years to pull Senegal out of three years of economic and political turmoil that have sent unemployment soaring.
He and Faye, who won the presidency and in November secured a landslide victory in parliament, now have a clear path for implementing an ambitious, leftist reform agenda.
“We must carry out a deep and unprecedented break never seen in the history of our country since independence” from France, Sonko told lawmakers.
He said Senegal remained “locked into the colonial economic model” and vowed an overhaul of public action and tax reforms to foster “home-grown growth.”
ECOWAS defends Nigeria against Niger’s claims of ‘destabilization’ plot
- Niger’s military leaders broke away from the ECOWAS amid rising anti-France sentiments
LAGOS: West Africa’s regional bloc ECOWAS has come to Nigeria’s defense after claims by Niger that it was plotting to destabilize its neighbor.
Niger’s military leader General Abdourahamane Tchiani accused Nigeria of providing homes for two French nationals it expelled, allegedly for anti-government activities, during a televised Christmas Day broadcast on Wednesday.
Tchiani also lashed out against ECOWAS and claimed that France had established a base in Nigeria where it was arming terror groups in the Lake Chad region to foment unrest in his country.
“Nigerian authorities are not unaware of this underhanded move,” Tchiani said. “It is near a forest close to Sokoto where they wanted to establish a terrorist stronghold known as Lakurawa.”
“The French and ISWAP made this deal on March 4, 2024,” he added, referring to the Daesh West Africa Province militant group.
Earlier in December, Niger’s foreign minister summoned the charge d’affaires at the Nigerian Embassy, accusing its neighbors of “serving as a rear base” to “destabilize” the country.
ECOWAS and Nigeria rejected the accusations. “For years, Nigeria has supported peace and security of several countries not only in the West African subregion but also on the African continent,” the regional bloc said in a statement released.
“ECOWAS therefore refutes any suggestion that such a generous and magnanimous country would become a state-sponsor of terrorism.”
Nigeria’s Information Minister Mohammed Idris said in a separate statement Thursday that his country had no alliance with “France or any other country” to destabilize Niger, with whom it has had a choppy relationship since Tchiani seized power in a July 2023 coup.
Niger’s military leaders broke away from the ECOWAS amid rising anti-France sentiments.
Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who is currently head of the ECOWAS bloc, had briefly considered a regional military intervention to reinstate Niger’s ousted president Mohamed Bazoum.
But Idris said that Nigeria was open to dialogue with Niger despite its political situation.
“Nigeria remains committed to fostering regional stability and will continue to lead efforts to address terrorism and other transnational challenges,” he said.
Anger mounts in Kenya over abductions
- Former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, who was ousted after clashing with Ruto over the protests, also alleged on Friday that a secret unit was behind the disappearances
NAIROBI: Kenyan rights groups, lawyers and politicians voiced grave concern over a fresh spate of abductions targeting government critics on Friday.
A small protest was organized in northeastern Embu town, where a 24-year-old man, Billy Mwangi, disappeared last weekend.
Security forces in the East African nation have been accused of carrying out dozens of illegal detentions since youth-led anti-government demonstrations in June and July. The latest disappearances have been primarily young men who have criticized President William Ruto online.
Police have denied involvement but activists have questioned why they appear not to be investigating the disappearances.
The Law Society of Kenya said recent denials by the inspector-general of police were “insufficient,” calling for him to take clear action against the kidnappers or resign. “If indeed the police are not complicit,” LSK said, they must immediately “investigate and prosecute those responsible.”
Human Rights Watch said earlier this year that its research pointed toward a unit drawn from multiple security agencies.
Former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, who was ousted after clashing with Ruto over the protests, also alleged on Friday that a secret unit was behind the disappearances.
“Abducting these children and killing them is not a solution ... This is the first administration in the history of this country to target children for repression,” Gachagua claimed at a press conference.
The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights said Thursday there had been 82 abduction cases carried out “clandestinely, with unidentified armed persons” since June, with 29 still missing. It listed seven people who had been abducted since Dec. 17.
Two of them — Mwangi and Peter Muteti — were taken shortly after sharing AI-generated images of Ruto dead.
The Kenyan Judiciary said this week that “abductions have no place in law and indeed are a direct threat to the rights of citizens.”
In a post on X on Thursday, it urged “security agencies and all connected entities to adhere to the law to safeguard fundamental rights and freedoms.”
The anti-government demonstrations earlier this year were sparked by proposed tax hikes, triggering the worst crisis since Ruto took power in 2022.
While large-scale rallies have mostly stopped, anger against the government has simmered, fueled by a cost of living crisis and continued allegations of brutality by the security forces.
