Sawt Falasteen - Unfazed devotees shrug off stampede at India mega-festival

The Kumbh Mela attracts tens of millions of Hindu faithful from around India every 12 years to the northern city of Prayagraj, but has a woeful record of deadly crowd incidents.

Wednesday's pre-dawn disaster, which saw a surging crowd spill out of a police cordon and trample bystanders, prompted some spooked pilgrims to leave the festival.

But many more were still arriving in the stampede's aftermath to participate in what they said was a matter of religious obligation.

"We've obviously heard about the stampede," 21-year-old Naveen Pradhan, who arrived at the festival with his family hours after the disaster, told AFP.

"But this is a holy thing, a religious thing, something we should do as Hindus, and my family wouldn't have missed this no matter what."

The six-week Kumbh Mela is the single biggest milestone on the Hindu religious calendar, and Wednesday marked one of the holiest days in the festival, coinciding with an alignment of the Solar System's planets.

Despite the early morning disaster, saffron-clad holy men continued with the day's rituals hours later, leading millions into a sin-cleansing bath by the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers.

"The journey was challenging -- the trains were packed, the train stations were packed," pharmacist Padmabati Dam, who travelled by train for more than 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) to reach the festival, told AFP.

"We were tired after such a long journey but as soon as we took a dip in the river we just felt so fresh and happy. It was as if all that inconvenience was really worth it."

- Mythological battle -

The Kumbh Mela is rooted in a mythological Hindu battle between deities and demons for control of a pitcher containing the nectar of immortality.

Organisers have likened the scale of this year's festival to a temporary country, forecasting up to 400 million pilgrims would visit before the final day on February 26.

Authorities waited nearly 18 hours after Wednesday's stampede to give an official death toll, an apparent effort to minimise disruption to the day's events.

Even before the latest incident, attendees have fumed over what they said was poor crowd management.

Reserved pathways and cordoned-off areas reserved for eminent attendees have been a source of vehement complaint at the festival for reducing the amount of space for common pilgrims.

Police this year installed hundreds of cameras at the festival site and on roads leading to the sprawling encampment, mounted on poles and a fleet of overhead drones.

The surveillance network feeds into an artificial intelligence system at a command and control centre meant to alert staff if sections of the crowd get so concentrated that they pose a safety threat.

More than 400 people died after they were trampled or drowned at the Kumbh Mela on a single day of the festival in 1954, one of the largest tolls in a crowd-related disaster globally.

Another 36 people were crushed to death in 2013, the last time the festival was staged in Prayagraj.

O.Salim--SF-PST