This is not just a festival unfolding in Kerala.
On the banks of the Bharathapuzha river, history is being rewritten, and a new religious claim is taking shape.
It’s a story that is deeply political.
The organisers of the Mahamagham are calling it a revival of an ancient practice. The return of Mamankam, a centuries-old gathering once held on these banks.
The Mahamagham is also being branded as Kerala’s Kumbh Mela.
The Kumbh is a massive Hindu pilgrimage on sacred rivers including the Ganga. A gathering that today carries not just religious meaning, but political symbolism.
But here is where historians say the distortion begins
The initial versions of the Mamankam were not like the Kumbh.
From the 12th century onwards, it was a political, religious and ritualistic assembly where kingship was contested, power was displayed, and many communities, including Muslims, were part of its structure. The Mamankam then was not centred on holy dips or monastic hierarchies.
Today, that past is being retold in a different language.
Monks chant Vedic hymns. Lamps blaze over the river in evening aarti. Thousands gather for ritual bathing. And this is only the curtain raiser. A much larger Kumbh style event is planned for 2028.
Listen to how some participants describe it.
So what happens when a plural gathering from Kerala’s past is reintroduced as just a Hindu religious congregation? And that too in a district that has 70% Muslim population.
What exactly is being revived, and what is being reshaped?
And what is unfolding on the ground here right now?
Let me explain.
This is not just a festival story. It is about history, identity, and the reshaping of public space.
This is also documentation of how a powerful narrative is being built, at its first stage.
Our reporters Haritha Manav and Megha Mukundan went on the ground to understand the scale of the event, observe what is unfolding, and speak to the people involved.
Stories like this take time, effort, and resources.
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Kerala’s Mahamaagham is not just another devotional gathering.
And we should rethink what it costs to recast an ancient festival as Kumbh.
To know why, we must first understand what the ancient Mamankam was socially and politically.
Kumbh Mela is fundamentally a pilgrimage that centres around river oblation and ritual bathing at the confluence of Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati.
Mamankam on the other hand, historians say was also a political theatre.
Once every twelve years, rulers, warriors, traders and ritual specialists gathered on the banks of the river. This was not merely to perform oblation and other rites but also to publicly decide who will hold power for the next twelve years.
At the centre stood the Nilapadu Thara, a ceremonial platform. The ruler who sat there was recognised as the paramount authority of the region.
Its defining feature- from the 14th century- was the political battle between two rival kingdoms, the Zamorin of Calicut and the Valluvanad ruler.
The famous Chaver warriors would try to attack the Zamorin and the tradition was that - if they win, the rule gets passed on from the Zamorins to Valluvanad rulers.
Historian Rajan Gurukkal told us that originally, this right of presidency belonged to Valluvakonathiri, the ruler of Valluvanadu. Over time, this symbolic supremacy was forcibly appropriated by the Zamorin of Calicut.
The famous Konathiri–Zamorin conflict is inseparable from Mamankam because the festival became the symbolic battleground for lost authority.
Gurukkal says Mamankam crystallised a unique form of political struggle, where ritual, violence, memory, and legitimacy were fused into a single recurring spectacle of power.
The Kumbh Mela, he pointed out, follows a twelve-year cycle because it is anchored to the orbital period of Jupiter, which takes roughly 11.9 years to complete one revolution around the Sun.
And most importantly, the Kumbh Mela’s twelve-year periodicity is not a simple “once every twelve years” event in a single location. Instead, the Jupiter cycle is spatially distributed across four sites—Prayagraj, Haridwar, Ujjain, and Nashik—each activated by a different Jupiter–Sun configuration.
Mamankam was not held as a Hindu unifying festival.
Muslims were not peripheral observers. Historical records show Muslim merchants held ceremonial status within the festival structure. Muslim warriors served in the forces of rival kingdoms. Martial institutions linked to Muslim communities formed part of the Mamankam world.
The organisers of the new Mahamagham however invoke a mythical past. They say Tavanur- a place near the river- is the land where Lord Brahma performed a ritual at the request of Lord Parashurama.
They claim Mahamagham happened even before the time of Zamorins. But it also became about power and war after the Zamorins which is why it was called Mamankam.
All this is not about revival. It is a reclassification.
Many of the rituals at the Mahamagham here are not rooted in Kerala’s traditions.
The Nila Aarti, performed with multi tiered lamps at sunset, mirrors the Ganga Aarti of Varanasi. Evening lamp ceremonies of this scale and style are unfamiliar to Kerala’s river traditions.
The river aarti every evening has become a central visual of the Mahamagham.
The aarti takes place under the guidance of monks from the Juna Akhada- a monastic order established by Adi Sankaracharya- now headquartered in Uttar Pradesh
This is one of the most powerful monastic institutions of north India, central to the organisation of the Kumbh Mela. The Akhada tradition includes Naga sadhus, warrior ascetics historically linked to the defence of Sanatan Dharma.
Now, here you may wonder why the Juna Akhada is at the forefront of a festival in Kerala
In 2025, Swami Anandavanam Bharathi was declared the Mahamandaleshwar or the head of the Juna Akhada.
The Swami, is a native of Thrissur district in Kerala.
Formerly known as P Salil, he was a member of the Student Federation of India (SFI), the student wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
He faced several cases and in 2001, he received a police instruction to leave the place. Apparently he started a journey that ended in Prayagraj Kumbh.
Hindu monks performing rituals and chanting Vedas.
Thousands and thousands of attendees waiting to take a dip
Saffron flags everywhere, including the VHP flag.
Cut outs of Ram on the banks of the river, although the deities in the temples nearby are Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma.
A temporary bridge stretching from the Vishnu temple to the sandbanks where other temples are located.
This might come across as a temporary utility to ferry devotees, but organisers describe it as a metaphor for reclaiming Vedic continuity.
Hindu organisations linked to the RSS like Seva Bharati at the forefront of volunteering.
Interestingly, since the 1990s, cultural groups have organised secular Mamankam remembrance festivals focused on history, monuments, Kalari traditions, percussion and performing arts.
They aim to preserve Mamankam as Kerala’s historical heritage, not as a Hindu ritual spectacle.
Two different versions of the past are being staged on the same ground.
There is also a shift in how the river itself is imagined.
Bharathapuzha has historically been a shared social space tied to livelihoods, memory and literature.
But when a river is declared sacred in a specifically religious sense, it changes how space is understood. It becomes territory of faith.
Interestingly, this is not the first time such a revival model has appeared. A similar attempt to revive a Kumbh style gathering was reported in West Bengal in 2023, where the location of the event also intersected with a site carrying layered religious history
Now, apart from all these there are serious environmental concerns to this.
Bharathapuzha is not a perennial river. It is a fragile seasonal river already struggling to survive.
Studies have pointed to reduced flow, damaged tributaries, sand mining and pollution. In several stretches the riverbed remains exposed for long periods.
Environmentalists say large scale human interventions like mass bathing, temporary structures and ritual gatherings add another layer of pressure.
After recent Kumbh gatherings in north India, official monitoring recorded alarming contamination levels in river waters during peak bathing days.
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Producer: by Megha Mukundan, Script: Pooja Prasanna, Megha Mukundan, Reporting: Haritha Manav, Megha Mukundan, Camera: Ajay R, Megha Mukundan, Edit: Nikhil Sekhar ET