Kumbh Mela through the eyes of the British media

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, JAN. 13. One suspects that even a revolution in India may not have got the sort of attention in the British media that the Kumbh Mela is getting. For weeks, every second or third morning, readers of the ``quality'' press are treated to photographs of naked sadhus in various poses (this morning there is one of a sadhu with a cigarette in one hand, and a mobile phone in the other; and another of a ``Hindu holy man'' peering into a video camera), interspersed with some White faces cooing about their ``spiritual'' experience.

In the face of what one newspaper described as the ``world's greatest freak show'' (though it promptly put the quote in the mouth of an American tourist), even that old chestnut - the ``Kashmir issue'' - that used to come handy to the foreign press corps on a lean appears to have lost its pull.

That some very serious efforts are being made to address it, after a particularly difficult phase in Indo-Pakistan relations, is clearly not news but Cox & Kings' marketing chutzpah clearly is.

So, over to The Independent which this morning devoted nearly half a page on how ``Hindu tolerance runs dry as bigotry rears its ugly head at the greatest show on earth'' (all this is the heading). The story is about the resentment among the sadhus over Cox & Kings offer of a ``luxury experience'' at the mela to those who have green bills or notes printed in Her Majesty's mint. For $ 481 or œ 320, you could be ``at the heart of the world's largest spiritual gathering and yet return to your comforts'' which comprised ``well-appointed tents, attached bathrooms and multiethnic cuisine''.....the works. But apparently even before the ``sahibs'' and the ``memsahibs'' had time to tuck themselves in, the sadhus ``who wear no clothes'' got together and decided, in the words of The Independent's Peter Popham: ``Close the carnivorous bastards down.'' Whereupon the mela administration ``meekly'' gave in and the boys and girls with their green bills and notes from Her Majesty's mint were given marching orders.

According to The Guardian's man in New Delhi, executives from Channel 4 which has sent a 52- member crew to cover the event, were spotted ``lugging sacks of rice, ghee and fruit to the sadhus' camp as a peace offering'', though what came of it is not known.

What sparked the sadhus' anger is not known. While The Guardian suspects that it could have been a ``lump of meat'' consumed by someone at the ``luxury experience'', The Independent put it down to sheer ``bigotry.'' Mr. Popham swears that everyone at the ``luxury'' camp was ``painfully well behaved'' and there was no question of consuming meat or alcohol. ``...we had signed the pledge when we checked in for swearing liquor and meat for the duration'', he wrote. The real issue, he said, was something else. The sadhus protesting the ``imposition of outside values'' were ``merely re-enacting Hinduism's ancient paradox'' which was that: ``This most tolerant and inclusive of religions is also capable of bitter bigotry.''

One's own suspicion is that the truth was far simpler: somewhere along the way Kings and Cox did not reckon with the material needs of those who run the show: mobile phones don't come free. And by the time Channel 4 executives discovered it was too late; and then they picked on all the wrong things for a ``peace offering''. Ghee and rice in the time of mobile phones? They must be kidding. Whatever be the truth, is this the only news from India, for heaven's sake?

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