High above the millions of Hindu pilgrims walking the grounds of the Maha Kumbh Mela, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India beams down from giant billboards and posters as far as the eye can see. Elsewhere, there are life-size cutouts of the leader, luminous at night, with his hands folded in greeting.
The Maha Kumbh, a spiritual festival widely considered the largest gathering of humanity, is taking place this year in the city of Prayagraj, where the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers meet. Hindus believe that a third, mythical river called the Saraswati joins them there. Throngs of devotees take a dip in the holy waters in the belief that doing so will purge them of sins and grant them salvation.
It is a mesmerizing spectacle. There are ash-smeared monks, naked ascetics, priests with vermilion paste on their foreheads, ordinary pilgrims, tourists with selfie sticks, awe-struck foreigners, entertainers, small vendors and big advertisers. It is also a feat of urban planning, an overnight megalopolis built on land borrowed from the receding Ganges in the state of Uttar Pradesh, with tents, toilets, roads, streetlights and even automated ticket vending machines.
For Mr. Modi and his close ally Yogi Adityanath, the hard-line Hindu monk who is the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, the Maha Kumbh provides a marketing opportunity like no other. It is a platform to show off India’s achievements — and therefore their own — before a rapt citizenry and a watching world.
The political sensitivity of the event was apparent this past week when 30 pilgrims died and 90 were injured in a stampede, according to official counts. Mr. Adityanath appeared to try to minimize the episode, as it took him nearly 15 hours to acknowledge that people had died and to provide a death toll.
Mr. Modi expressed grief and offered help, but otherwise kept a distance from the tragic news. For him, the Kumbh represents an important opportunity to advertise himself as the man who will transform India into a well-governed, efficient, tech-savvy and business-friendly heavyweight.
A positive picture of the festival also helps Mr. Modi, a Hindu nationalist, satisfy a desire among his right-wing base to promote a glorious Hindu cultural and religious past.
Mr. Modi “is someone who has mixed religion and politics, religion and state,” said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, an author who has followed the rise of the Hindu right as it has sought to uproot the secular foundation laid down by India’s Constitution.
Keenly aware of the importance of image, Mr. Modi has enhanced his power by projecting himself not only as a political leader, but also as the caretaker of Hindu traditions. He is both the prime minister and “the head priest of Hinduism in the entire country” performing rituals familiar to many Hindus in public settings, Mr. Mukhopadhyay said.
Mr. Modi is expected to take his holy dip at the Maha Kumbh on Wednesday, the same day that the capital, New Delhi, holds regional elections. The media spotlight on him that day will spill over to his Bharatiya Janata Party as it contests the election.
Mr. Adityanath has been equally active in seeking political advantage from the spiritual event.
Last month, Mr. Adityanath, who has been seen at times as a potential successor to Mr. Modi, held a special cabinet meeting for state ministers in Prayagraj. There, they announced infrastructure projects and bathed at the confluence of the rivers — yet another sign, Mr. Mukhopadhyay said, of the increasingly blurred lines between religion and state.
A week later, after the stampede, Mr. Adityanath worked to spin the disaster as showcasing the prowess of the Maha Kumbh’s rescue operations.
The Kumbh Mela and other ritual bathing events have been around for centuries. Hindu legend holds that when gods and demons fought over a pitcher, or “kumbh,” of the nectar of immortality, the gods spilled drops in four places — each an Indian city that holds a Kumbh Mela every 12 years.
For decades, the festival was overseen largely by various orders of Hindu monks. But governments have long been facilitators, ensuring that the events are orderly and safe.
Kumbh Mela festivals have steadily increased in size over the decades, from a total attendance of a few million people to hundreds of millions, as better infrastructure and facilities attracted more pilgrims.
The central and state governments earmarked hundreds of millions of dollars for this year’s event, called the Maha Kumbh, or “Great” Kumbh, because it coincides with a rare celestial alignment last seen 144 years ago. The festival began in mid-January and will end late this month.
Government involvement is inevitable given the vastness of the pilgrimage, but “people don’t come to the Mela because it’s advertised or promoted by the government,” said Diana L. Eck, a professor emerita at Harvard Divinity School who worked on a 2015 study called “Kumbh: Mapping the Ephemeral Mega City.”
Still, Mr. Adityanath has gone to great lengths to pitch this year’s festival as a tourist event, with Kumbh “experience” packages, luxury tents and efforts to attract celebrity guests. As he made it a P.R.-driven affair, some attendees said he had distracted from the essence of the festival.
“Politicians should do politics and saints should do their religious work,” said Narender Kumar Sahoo, a pilgrim from the state of Madhya Pradesh who runs a grocery store in his village.
The stampede also led to criticism from opposition parties that Mr. Adityanath’s courting of wealthy and influential attendees came at the cost of arrangements for ordinary pilgrims.
Amanda Lucia, a professor in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of California-Riverside, has attended the Kumbh Mela many times. Dr. Lucia recalled being astounded during her first visit to a smaller version of the Kumbh in 1997, boarding a packed train from the Indian city of Varanasi to Prayagraj, where she was forced to sit under a sink for the roughly three-hour journey.
Promotion of the event, both domestically and globally, increased significantly after Mr. Modi came to power in 2014, Dr. Lucia said. In 2019, months before Mr. Modi was elected to a second term, he and Mr. Adityanath upgraded a “half” Kumbh Mela that occurs every six years into a so-called full Kumbh, a move meant to win support for his campaign.
“A lot of people were calling it the ‘government Kumbh’” and complaining that the overtly political ploy had cheapened the event, Dr. Lucia said.
One major change for this year’s Kumbh is its heavy marketing as a cultural and developmental showcase — “The Greatest Show on Earth” for Hinduism — rather than as a religious event. The state has highlighted how revenue from commerce associated with the festival will add to official coffers.
The government of Mr. Adityanath has wowed devotees by showering them with rose petals dropped from helicopters. Billboards and digital displays trumpet the government’s investments in infrastructure. Officials share endless data points, including the number of bathers and foreign tourists, feeding the hype.
State government posters have advertised the Maha Kumbh as “divine, grand, digital” — a modern twist for a country that sees itself as a model of homegrown high-tech innovation.
Digital technology has made it far easier for people to find their way around the temporary city. QR codes provide links to hotels, food, emergency assistance and the Mela administration authorities. Nestled among those offerings is a code with a link to the “achievements” of the state government.
Officials said they were using sophisticated technology powered by artificial intelligence to monitor and manage crowds. At the lost-and-found center, workers have been using facial recognition technology to track missing people.
Private companies have supplied artificial intelligence software that can record specific information like the number of people taking holy dips at a certain hour, said Ashok Gupta, a police inspector overseeing the Integrated Command and Control Center.
The software can also determine the inflow and outflow of people in a certain area and manage the risk of overcrowding by redirecting people, although that system could not stop this week’s stampede.
For many of the millions of pilgrims, however, the marvel of the Maha Kumbh Mela is neither political nor organizational.
Dharmendra Dubey, 28, walked for miles toward the confluence of the rivers, reaching the waters after dark. As he toweled off after his dip, shivering as the temperature hit the low 50s, Mr. Dubey, who works in a private bank, said he felt energized.
Despite the long walk, he said he could go into the cold water again.
“No tiredness now,” Mr. Dubey said. “It’s gone.”