Notes from India (13) - 18 January 2025 - Kumbh Mela Festival

Above: Kumbh Mela Festival, 16 January 2025. Varanasi, (oh so colorful) India.

"Vast crowds of Hindu pilgrims in India bathed in sacred waters as the Kumbh Mela festival opened on Monday, with organizers expecting 400 million people -- the world's largest gathering of humanity -- to assemble over six weeks." AFP

https://x.com/AFP/status/1878624212459663493?t=KCQPE_A0t7bknKWNAxSUng&s=09

Americans are rightly focused on the upcoming inauguration of President Trump. Yet, two days ago a festival began in India which will dwarf the US presidential inauguration ceremony and will receive little world attention. Kumbh Mela will be attended over the next six weeks by 400 million people, more than the population of the entire United States.

During my 2019 visit to Varanasi, I got a figurative inkling of the almost incomprehensible magnitude of India's population when I did a Facebook location check at Varanasi's Dashashwahmed Ghat. My click was added to five million clicks entered on Facebook over the previous twelve months. I checked the number of Facebook check-ins at Yellowstone National Park over the same period: a half million, only ten percent of the Varanasi clicks!

India, with its huge growing population and growing economy, long seen as a world laggard, is starting to stir. Like a stealthy tiger skulking in the tall grass, India lurks, undercover, unnoticed, ready to pounce on an unwitting world. India (1.44 billion) now has a greater population than China (1.40 billion) and the difference is growing in India's favor. India's economy is expected to surpass Germany to become number three, after the US and China, in 2025. This week the World Bank projected a 2026 India growth rate of 6.7% versus 2.7% for the entire world. India has 167 billionaires, third after only the US and China.

Kumbh Mela is a reminder that Indians are now on the US radar screen in ways not seen heretofore. Elon Musk says we need more H-1B visa Indians to propel the AI revolution and Steve Bannon says we don't. A Utah Silicon Slopes executive (I have forgotten his name) told our Park City, UT ROMEO group, LSDM, circa 2020 that in order for the Utah tech industry to produce a unicorn, it needed more temples.... he paused, then said, "Hindu temples." His implication, of course, was that incremental Indian tech talent was critical to Utah's Silicon Slopes' success. And the irony of Hindu temple growth in multiple Mormon temples Utah is not lost.

US growth and progress has always been fueled by immigrants who risk all to come to the US, where freedom and entrepreneurship have melded to create the greatest per capita economic success story in the history of the world. And the US would benefit significantly from a surfeit of H 1-B tech immigrants from India, just as it has from immigrant surges in prior eras. Hopefully, Musk will win on this one. He needs to urge his boss to reeducate Bannon and the anti-immigrant MAGA base that targeted immigration is in the US's interest as it always has been. India origin DJT honchos Vivek Ramaswami and Kash Patel would no doubt agree.

In any case, Americans need to pay more attention to India. The spiritual devotion that fuels Kumbh Mela is in the DNA of most Indians. Many, like me, believe the US is in need of renewed spiritual energy. Who better to amplify an American spiritual rebirth than a bunch of smart Indian, tech H 1-B's?

Addendum: (Notes of SDT 2019 visit to Varanasi)

Above: Ritual Ganges Ceremony. Dashashwahmed Ghat. Varanasi, India. 09 December 2019.

The ceremony begins at 8:00 PM and lasts almost an hour. It involves various rituals and incantations. The principal audience is people in boats afloat in the Ganges River. Varanasi is a hard city to visit. But, because of its spiritual centrality in an intensely spiritual nation, a full appreciation of India cannot be attained without a visit to Varanasi.

I first visited Varanasi (also called Banares) in 1963 when I was eighteen years old. So much of my memory of those years is buried away in aging grey matter, but my recollection of being in a boat on the Ganges with my parents and brother observing the rituals and cremations on the ghats remains vivid. SDT