Where Nectar Once Spilled

Holy bells clanged and trumpets blared, and up from the sacred place, above the murmur of the vast crowd, rose the cries: "Victory to Mother Ganges" "Long live religion . . ." The sun was not yet up, but at the confluence of the Ganges and Jumna Rivers, 4,000,000 Hindu pilgrims were gathered for the great ceremony.

Just before sunrise, a great procession, led by naked, ash-smeared holy men and gold-caparisoned elephants, trod solemnly toward the winter stream in a clamor of conch shells and cymbals. With ritual reverence, the first pilgrims rubbed the water into their skin and their eyes, then drank it. They believed from their scripture legends that they might thereby speed to Nirvana and be spared the pain of countless rebirths in man's universe.

"The Nagas Were Violent." For ten weeks every twelve years, Hindu millions bathe where the sacred rivers meet. The scriptures tell how divine nectar, which is said to confer immortality and everlasting bliss, was once spilled into the rivers during an epic fight between the demons and the gods. There, too, Brahma, Lord of Creation, gathered strength for his mighty task. And when the sun, Jupiter and the moon enter a certain astrological relationship--this occurs during a few hours on one day once in 144 years--it is the most auspicious time for bathing.

That auspicious time came one day last week. The pilgrims swarmed into the nearby city of Allahabad (pop. 260,000) on 200 special trains, rattle-clatter bicycles, on foot and upon the backs of coolies and stronger relatives. The government had spent $2,000,000 and many months of careful planning on safe roads, pontoon bridges and DDT. They also mustered 40,000 troops, police, Boy Scouts and volunteer workers to insure that no harm should come to the faithful. But when the holy men and the first procession headed back from the confluence, they were confronted by tens of thousands of other pilgrims, surging in joy to the waters. The holy men, ascetic but arrogant Nagas, wielded their ancient maces, spears and tridents to ward off the crowd. "The pilgrims got the impression that the Nagas were violent," explained the authorities afterward, "and therefore ran for their lives, crushing to death the infirm, the old and others who came in their way."

In the crush, a few young men climbed up to overhead electric cables, which by some chance were not live, and swung dizzily along them to safety. But others of the frightened were ground relentlessly into one another, until clothes, then lives, fell away. Pilgrims only a few dozen yards away could not hear the cries of the desperate amid their own chants of "Victory to Mother Ganges" and "Long live religion." Eager to reach the confluence, they pressed forward into the vortex.

One Consolation. Not until many hours later, when police cordoned off the deathly mudstretch, did India learn the extent of the tragedy. The toll: 316 dead (267 women & children); 200 missing, probably dead; 2,000 injured. Many of the hurt ones could not be traced because their relatives had dragged them off, not to hospital but to the sacred confluence, in the belief that its touch might heal their suffering.

All India sorrowed, and there was only one consolation for the orthodox and the bereaved. "If she did have to die," sobbed one Hindu for his aged mother, "she chose a good day and the holiest spot."

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