{"id":29998,"date":"2019-01-21T09:23:05","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T09:23:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=29998"},"modified":"2019-01-21T09:23:05","modified_gmt":"2019-01-21T09:23:05","slug":"hindus-take-auspicious-plunge-during-indias-kumbh-mela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=29998","title":{"rendered":"Hindus take auspicious plunge during India’s Kumbh Mela"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Millions of Hindu devotees will take a holy dip in the Ganges River on Monday on one of the six most auspicious days to bathe during Kumbh Mela – the world\u2019s largest religious festival.<\/p>\n

More than 18 million pilgrims – led by naked, ash-smeared ascetics – entered the grounds last week as the festival began.<\/p>\n

During the eight-week gathering at Prayagraj, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, up to 150 million people, including a million foreign visitors, are expected to bathe at the confluence of the Ganges, the Yamuna, and a mythical third river, the Saraswati.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Narendra Modi<\/a>‘s Bharatiya Janata Party, which governs the state, sees a successful festival as a way to burnish its credentials as a defender of the Hindu faith. Giant cardboard cutouts of Modi, who faces a tough test in a general election due by May, have adorned the sacred site.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For the first time at the Kumbh Mela, a transgender ashram known as the Kinnar Akhara and led by rights LGBTQ activist Lakshmi Narayan Tripathi from Mumbai, joined the holy bathing. Tripathi, a tattooed transgender leader and a former reality TV star, has become an unlikely icon at the festival.<\/p>\n

India<\/a> legalised gay sex in September, but the LGBTQ community still faces prejudice in the deeply religious country.<\/p>\n

Members of the Kinnar Akhara received a police escort to the bathing site, where Tripathi last Tuesday plunged into the waters fully clothed to the cheers of her followers.<\/p>\n

Tripathi has courted controversy with support for the building of a temple dedicated to Ram on the site of a former mosque in Ayodhya, which was demolished by hardline Hindus in 1992, leading to riots in which thousands died.<\/p>\n

The Kumbh Mela festival has its roots in a Hindu tradition that says the God Vishnu wrested a golden pot containing the nectar of immortality from demons.<\/p>\n

In a 12-day fight for possession, four drops fell to Earth, in the cities of Prayagraj, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nasik, which now share the Kumbhs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Millions of Hindu devotees will take a holy dip in the Ganges River on Monday on one of the six most auspicious days to bathe during Kumbh Mela – the world\u2019s largest religious festival. More than 18 million pilgrims – led by naked, ash-smeared ascetics – entered the grounds last week as the festival began.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":29999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}