By Brij Khandelwal
2025.11.06 (Vrindavan Today News): In India, tragedies rooted in crowd mismanagement during religious gatherings have become a relentless cycle. Temples, fairs, and holy sites routinely bear witness to negligence, where basic safety precautions are met with suspicion and resistance. Every disaster prompts the same official condolences, yet accountability remains elusive. Faith, however deep, cannot and should not be a license for chaos. These sacred spaces demand scientific planning and strict discipline so that a ritual dip is remembered for its spiritual meaning—not for its mortal cost.
Every few months, faith turns deadly in this country—a bleak, broken record playing on repeat. One day, a boat laden with pilgrims capsizes; another day, a temple bridge collapses under the weight of human negligence. Elsewhere, mountains crumble, burying devotees alive. The locations change—Haridwar, Naina Devi, Vaishno Devi, Prayagraj—but the aftermath remains unchanged: scattered slippers, wilted flowers, and yet another government tweet about a “tragic accident.” Cleanup crews move in, the debris is cleared, and faith marches on, undeterred.
India is a global outlier—devout in its worship, and, tragically, prolific in death tolls at religious sites. No other nation sees so many of its citizens risk life and limb for faith, year after year, at perilously crowded places. In the 1954 Kumbh in Prayagraj, eight hundred lives were lost in a “holy stampede.” Mandher Devi, 2005: more than three hundred killed on a slick, oil-soaked hill. Naina Devi, 2008: a rumor claims hundreds. Vaishno Devi, 2022: a New Year’s crush, a dozen dead. And now, in 2025, another Kumbh, another river, another grisly toll—thirty, forty new lives lost.
Official preparations are riddled with contradictions. Glamorous corridors are unveiled, digital apps launched, and millions spent scheduling ritual baths. Yet emergency exits, safety gates, and escape routes remain mostly on blueprints—precaution treated almost as blasphemy, as if God himself were the disaster manager. Every inquiry since 1954 echoes the same diagnosis: limit crowd sizes, control the flow, manage the panic. But in 2025, drones merely film tragedies from above—silent witnesses, impotent as angels unable to intervene.
Disaster follows a familiar script. A single cry—“The bridge has collapsed!” or “Bomb!”—and suddenly thousands are thrust into a deadly struggle in a narrow lane. Panic consumes the crowd; a cacophony of screams turns to an uncanny silence. There’s no public announcement, no visible leadership. The images remain haunting: bodies, crushed chests, abandoned slippers. By evening, a chief minister orders an inquiry; by morning, normality returns. New rituals, new speeches, and yet another hollow promise of “better management next time”.
The pressing question isn’t why these events happen, but why we’ve learned to accept them. The answer is damning: religion, for many, has shifted from spiritual journey to grand spectacle. Crowd control is mistakenly equated with lack of faith, and safety measures are dismissed as “Western imports.” Pilgrims are reassured with, “Trust God, not barricades.” Priests urge patience, politicians count the crowd, somewhere in between, an ordinary devotee becomes a casualty.
Faith is meant to elevate the soul, not entomb the body. If India wants its pilgrimage tradition to endure, pilgrimage safety must be given the same seriousness as any high-risk industrial operation—not with superstition, but with training and scientific planning. Condolences and commissions cannot pay this mounting debt.
Let the next holy dip be remembered for its devotion, not for death. Even the divine, perhaps, is weary of such bloodstained faith.
