The Harvard Gazette

Kumbh Mela

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The Harvard Kumbh Mela team gathered at Loeb House to reflect on the experience and to launch a book and exhibit on their findings, “Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral Megacity." Professor of Urban Design and Planning Rahul Mehrotra (from left), President Drew Faust, and Tarun Khanna, director of the South Asia Institute, discussed the exhibit. Khanna, born in India, set aside his professorial mien when he took his parents to the festival and took a ritual bath in the river water.

A powerful convergence

Students, researchers share lessons from Kumbh Mela

World|

DateApril 17, 2015March 21, 2019

In a talk at the Ed Portal, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School and South Asia Institute Director Tarun Khanna said that thinking globally opens up whole new ways to approach problems — if the entrepreneur has the vision to recognize them.

HarvardX course closes in on global view

Professor describes benefits of health care, entrepreneurship, and economies

Campus|

DateOctober 21, 2014April 17, 2019

Harvard's global presence continues to expand. In 2010, volunteers assisted in Haiti following the earthquake there (photo 1). In 2013, students and professors worked with scholars at the David Rockefeller Center's office in São Paulo, Brazil (photo 2). Researching India's Kumbh Mela and the “ephemeral city” was the focus across Harvard's Schools in early 2013 (photo 3).

Citizen of the world

Harvard increasingly engages across nations, issues, peoples

World|

DateSeptember 26, 2013May 23, 2019

SAI offers ‘feet on the street’ experience

Campus|

DateMay 30, 2013

The Maha Kumbh Mela, an eight-week Hindu festival held every 12 years in India and the largest human gathering on the planet, ended three weeks ago. In January and February, nearly 50 Harvard professors, students, doctors, and researchers made a pilgrimage to India's Kumbh Mela, which housed roughly 3 million people for its 55-day duration and drew as many as 20 million visitors on peak river-bathing days.

Lessons of a temporary city

Researchers from across Harvard share findings from India’s Kumbh Mela festival

World|

DateApril 4, 2013April 2, 2019

In a recent talk, installation artist Helen Marriage (right) and Rahul Mehrotra, professor of urban design and planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, pondered whether temporary public space can have a spiritual dimension and, if so, what is the role of the artist in creating it?

In search of sacred spaces

Artist, professor say special places, public events can radiate auras bordering on religious

Arts|

DateApril 2, 2013May 15, 2019

Over 25 days, using not much more than a team of Indian medical student volunteers and 10 iPads, the FXB team cataloged 40,000 patient records. Here, pilgrims gather for drug distribution at one of the pharmacies.

Tracking disease in a tent city

Public health researchers follow outbreaks in real time at India's Kumbh Mela

World|

DateMarch 1, 2013April 10, 2019

“The Kumbh’s organizers let everything else be handled by non-government entities like the akharas,” or religious orders, said John Macomber, a senior lecturer in finance at HBS, who came to Kumbh with his own mission: to turn its organized chaos into a Business School case study.

Among millions, a blank slate

Pondering the price of potatoes, and other mysteries of commerce, at India’s Kumbh Mela

World|

DateFebruary 22, 2013

“For anyone interested in the vibrancy of Hindu culture, this is a kind of epicenter of religious life,” said Harvard Professor Diana Eck (not pictured). Eck was joined by Harvard Divinity School students at Kumbh Mela, a six-week-long, millions-strong celebration of Mother Ganga.

Saving the mother river

Divinity, College students explore ‘sacred geography’ at India’s Kumbh Mela

World|

DateFebruary 14, 2013April 15, 2019

The largest public gathering in the world, the Kumbh Mela is expected to draw as many as 70 million people, a crowd greater than New York, London, and Paris combined, for ritual bathing in the rivers.

Mapping a megacity’s metabolism

Design School team finds lessons for urban planners at India’s Kumbh Mela gathering

World|

DateFebruary 5, 2013December 15, 2017

A sadhu, or holy man, arrives in style, his face covered by light ash.

Inside India’s pop-up city

Harvard team maps the Kumbh Mela, the world’s largest gathering

World|

DateJanuary 21, 2013April 11, 2019