Top professors from the prestigious Harvard University highlighted the coexistence of tradition and technology and the intersection of commerce and spirituality at Maha Kumbh.
They emphasised lessons and opportunities from the world’s largest religious gathering, which inches towards closure on Wednesday.
The Consulate General of India in New York organised a special discussion on Monday titled ‘Insights from the World’s Largest Spiritual Gathering – Maha Kumbh’ featuring the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School, Tarun Khanna, Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies at the Harvard Divinity School Diana Eck, and Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School Tiona Zuzul.
The professors shared their insights and experiences from on-ground research conducted during the Kumbh Mela in 2013 and various aspects of this year’s pilgrimage, from spirituality and engineering to administration and the combination of tradition, technology, and economics.
Khanna, addressing the gathering at the special event hosted by the Consul General of India in New York Binaya Pradhan, underlined the aspects of scale, sanitation and technology at the Kumbh Mela.
“I, personally as a scholar, am fascinated by the coexistence of tradition and technology because that’s how society is developed. We keep some things core to us, that’s a tradition that stays” and adds layers of technology to it, Khanna said.
Khanna said the Kumbh Mela is a “fascinating place” to see how technology gets absorbed into religion and “it’s been neat to see layers of technology” implemented at the Kumbh.
He also pointed out that the 2025 Kumbh is called the ‘Swachh Kumbh’ and said it is “incredibly clean”.
Khanna also lauded the digitisation of the “lost and found” services in the Maha Kumbh this year, describing it as “super interesting” because “it speaks directly to this idea of tradition and technology”.
Eck in her presentation underscored that while the Kumbh Mela is a “great pilgrimage”, “what astonished us more than anything was just the astonishing fact that this city is built in such a short time, and it has a whole range of things associated with it”, including engineering teams, electricity substations, building an urban environment, health services and small businesses.
Eck highlighted the temporary tents built with four to five materials for the Kumbh by skilled builders in a matter of days.
“The Kumbh Mela is a good example of the ability to create simple structures with simple materials and do it quickly. There is a lot that various places in the world can learn from this,” she said, citing the example of the need for temporary encampments for vast refugee populations.
“That kind of skill, I don’t think is going to be outgrown in the future,” she said.
Eck also lauded the technological innovation at Kumbh, describing it as “extraordinary”.
Zuzul, who had travelled to India for the first time in 2013 for Kumbh as part of Eck’s research team, highlighted the evolution of businesses and economic opportunities as well as logistical challenges and solutions that the Kumbh presents.
Zuzul said she hopes to return to India for the next Kumbh in around 2037.
“I’m really excited to understand how this intersection of commerce and spirituality will evolve. It is important for the government, and larger and local businesses to think about what kind of Kumbh we want to create. What sorts of commercial opportunities do we need to provide, and what does that mean for the spiritual essence of the religious gathering,” she said.
Khanna suggested the organisers could spend a bit more time passing on the learnings from one Kumbh to the next, not just in 6-12 year intervals but year by year.
In response to a question on what the organisers did well this year and issues that can be fixed for the future, Zuzul said: “Something that really impressed me this year was just the thought that went into creating the infrastructure to allow for a successful and orderly Kumbh, whether it’s the number of toilets that were built or the Artificial Intelligence cameras that could count the number of people present in any given place.”
“I think changing human behaviour is something that takes a very long time, and often can’t just be done through these sorts of mechanisms.” “I suspect that what we’ll see in future years more attempts to influence how people behave in this space in a more emergent way,” she said.
The Maha Kumbh Mela commenced in Prayagraj at the confluence of the Ganges, the Yamuna, and the mythical Sarasvati on January 13 this year and will conclude on Mahashivratri on Wednesday.
The Uttar Pradesh government has said that an unprecedented 600 million devotees at the Maha Kumbh Mela so far this year have taken a holy dip in the Triveni Sangam, the confluence of the three holy rivers.
“Basically, this is it. It is the river itself for which people come. That is the cathedral, that is the temple, that is the destination,” Eck said. (Agencies)
