Trampled Faith and Slanging Matches

In the aftermath of the Mahakumbh stampede, India’s politicians have retreated to their familiar trenches, trading blame instead of solutions.

Uttar Pradesh

Following the stampede at the Mahakumbh Mela where at least 30 people were killed, India’s politicians have responded in their usual fashion – with acrimony, deflection and grandstanding rather than any introspection.

In Parliament, opposition lawmakers have wasted little time in turning the Mahakumbh tragedy into a political flashpoint, accusing the BJP government of gross negligence, bureaucratic indifference and, more darkly, a concerted cover-up. Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav, spearheading the attack against Yogi Adityanath’s government, has alleged that authorities deployed JCB machines not merely to clear the aftermath but to erase evidence - a claim that, if true, would suggest something far graver than mere mismanagement.

Yadav and his party insist that the official death toll, already devastating, is a fraction of the real figure, pointing to thousands of reported missing persons. The government, for its part, has dismissed these assertions as alarmist, reducing the opposition’s claims to little more than political theatrics.

Yet the absence of transparency, the reluctance to release a full list of the deceased and the conflicting accounts from the ground have only deepened public suspicions.

For its part, the ruling BJP has sought to frame the disaster as either an unfortunate accident or, more ominously, a conspiracy. Ravi Shankar Prasad, a senior BJP MP, declared in Parliament that the government was “getting the smell of a conspiracy” from its ongoing investigation.

The Mahakumbh has always been an event of staggering complexity, involving weeks of religious gatherings, processions and mass pilgrimages. Ensuring the safety of millions of devotees is an immense logistical challenge, one that transcends party lines. Yet instead of pushing for a serious investigation into security lapses or proposing concrete reforms, opposition leaders have opted for rhetorical excess, turning grief into ammunition for their broader ideological battles.

DMK MP Kanimozhi, for instance, used the occasion to denounce the government’s vision of “civilisational nationalism,” linking the stampede to the BJP’s alleged suppression of minorities and its handling of laws such as the Citizenship Amendment Act. Her remarks did little to address the core question of administrative failure at the Mahakumbh.

The opposition’s outrage is in keeping with its own electoral calculations. For the Samajwadi Party, attacking the BJP over the Mahakumbh disaster is a way to consolidate its position. The DMK’s broader critique of religious politics dovetails neatly with its ideological opposition to Hindutva. But pointing out failures is easy, offering meaningful alternatives is harder. The truth is, political parties of all hues have failed to build an effective, depoliticised mechanism for disaster management at such events.

Despite India’s history of deadly religious gatherings - stampedes at the Kumbh Mela in 1954, 2003, and 2013, among others - the authorities continue to be woefully unprepared. Crowd control measures remain inadequate, emergency response systems sluggish, and, most damningly, accountability elusive. Instead of quibbling over body counts, India’s political class should be asking why such tragedies keep recurring and what must change to prevent them.

The government’s refusal to release a detailed, transparent list of the deceased only fuels public suspicion. If the official figures are accurate, why not publish the names? The lack of transparency creates a vacuum in which rumours and political opportunism thrive. Meanwhile, the suggestion that missing persons reports could run into the thousands demands either confirmation or categorical refutation, not evasion.

The tragedy of the Mahakumbh stampede is not just the loss of life but the predictability of the response that followed. In a nation where faith and politics are deeply intertwined, religious gatherings become political spectacles and disasters become partisan battlegrounds. In Prayagraj, as in so many past calamities, responsibility is shirked, blame is traded and the cycle of negligence continues. If there is a conspiracy here, it is one of collective political failure.