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The kumbh mela […] was supposed to take place next year but was pulled forward to…Not strictly COVID-related, but this was the first I'd heard of this and it sounded surprising to me, so I looked it up. I picked an older version of the Wikipedia article (from Nov 2019, just to rule out recent changes that may have been made because of COVID-19) and it (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kumbh_Mela&oldid=...) says:
> The weeks over which the festival is observed cycles at each site approximately once every 12 years[note 1] based on the Hindu luni-solar calendar and the relative astrological positions of Jupiter, sun and moon.
where [note 1] gives as reference a 2008 book that says:
> About once a century the Kumbha Mela returns to a site after eleven years. Jupiter’s orbit is actually 11.86 years, so after each twelve-year cycle it moves a little further into the sign, which the eleventh year celebration corrects.
Another 2019 book cited in the article is more clear, and its second chapter explicitly mentions 2021 for Haridwar:
> The Mela is organized when a specific astronomical combination (kumbha yoga) of the Moon, the Sun, and Jupiter occurs in specific zodiac signs. The Moon takes around one month (27.32 days) to orbit the earth during which it transits through the 12 signs. The Sun transits through the 12 signs in around one year (365.2425 days), the time taken by the earth to orbit the Sun. Finally, Jupiter transits through the 12 signs in nearly 12 years (11.8618 years), the time taken by it to orbit the Sun. The transit period of Jupiter being the longest—12 times that of the Sun and around 159 times that of the moon—the kumbha yoga for a location repeats when Jupiter enters the same sign again. This is why the Kumbha Mela is held once every 12 years at a given venue, as a general rule.
> The seventh Mela after six melas held in 72 years (each held 12 years after the previous one) is held 11 years after the sixth Mela, giving us seven melas in 83 years. The reason is that Jupiter completes seven transits of the zodiac in nearly 83 years (11.8618 × 7 = 83.0326), and moves to the next sign in the 84th year. This is why the Haridwar Kumbha was held in 1938 after 1927 and the Prayaga Kumbha was held in 1977 after 1966. The last Kumbha in Haridwar was in 2010 (1938 + 72), but the next one will be in 2021 (1938 + 83 = 2010 + 11).
I wonder where the idea of "was supposed to take place next year" comes from: my guess is that someone extrapolated the approximate "takes place every 12 years" and just naively added 12 to the previous year (2010) at the same location. These festivals are based on the assumption that a certain conjunction in the sky indicates a sacred time, to be marked by bathing in holy rivers etc. One can of course reject this notion entirely (and with it the festival itself), but it doesn't make much sense to treat the festival like a sports event or conference that can be moved around. The government of India can no more change the date of the Kumbh Mela than, say, the government of Italy change the date of Easter. All a government can do is restrict people's movements, etc. The accusation that crowds were allowed to gather obviously makes sense; not so much the accusation that the date was changed. (Incidentally, Wikipedia has multiple articles on the date of Easter: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Easter_controvers... https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Date_of_Easter&ol... https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reform_of_the_dat... .)