section_path: Significance and impact
section_name: Significance and impact
paragraph_text: Significance and impact
  
  The Kumbh Melas of the past, albeit with different regional names, attracted large attendance and have been religiously significant to the Hindus for centuries. They have included initiation of followers to the akharas, discourses of religious leaders, and religious music. The 1834 Islamic encyclopaedia Yadgar-i-Bahaduri written in Lucknow described the Prayag festival and its sanctity to the Hindus. It is also financially significant.
  
  Officials of the East India Company saw the Hindu pilgrimage as a means to collect large sums of revenue through a "pilgrim tax" and taxes on the trade that occurred during the festival. The British officials raised the tax to amount greater than average monthly income and the attendance fell drastically. The Prayagwal pandas resisted as the impact of the religious tax on the pilgrims became clear. According to colonial records, they had originally supported the tax; since the records of the Prayag Mela during this period were written by colonialists and missionaries, Macclean argues that they present a biased materialistic view.
  
  Baptist missionary John Chamberlain, who visited the 1824 Ardh Kumbh Mela at Haridwar, stated that a large number of visitors came there for trade. He also includes a 1814 letter from his missionary friend who distributed copies of the Gospel to the pilgrims and tried to convert some to Christianity. According to an 1858 account of the Haridwar Kumbh Mela by the British civil servant Robert Montgomery Martin, the visitors at the fair included people from a number of races and clime. Along with priests, soldiers, and religious mendicants, the fair had horse traders from Bukhara, Kabul, Turkistan as well as Arabs and Persians. The festival had roadside merchants of food grains, confectioners, clothes, toys and other items. Thousands of pilgrims in every form of transport as well as on foot marched to the pilgrimage site, dressed in colourful costumes, some without clothes, occasionally shouting "Mahadeo Bol" and "Bol, Bol" together. At night the river banks and camps illuminated with oil lamps, fireworks burst over the river, and innumerable floating lamps set by the pilgrims drifted downstream of the river. Several Hindu rajas, Sikh rulers and Muslim Nawabs visited the fair. Europeans watched the crowds and few Christian missionaries distributed their religious literature at the Hardwar Mela, wrote Martin.
  
  Prior to 1838, British officials collected taxes but provided no infrastructure or services to the pilgrims. This changed particularly after 1857. According to Amna Khalid, the Kumbh Melas emerged as one of the social and political mobilisation venues and the colonial government became keen on monitoring these developments after the Indian rebellion of 1857. The government deployed police to gain this intelligence at the grassroots level of Kumbh Mela. The British officials in co-operation with the native police also made attempts to improve the infrastructure, and movement of pilgrims to avoid a stampede, detect sickness, and the sanitary conditions at the Melas. Reports of cholera led the officials to cancel the pilgrimage, but the pilgrims went on "passive resistance" and stated they preferred to die rather than obey the official orders. Mark Twain also visited Kumbh Mela of Prayagraj in 1895 for which he wrote:
  
  The positive impact of kumbh mela is this festival helps preserve cultural traditions and promotes the values of spirituality, unity, and devotion.
  
  It is wonderful, the power of a faith like that, that can make multitudes upon multitudes of the old and weak and the young and frail enter without hesitation or complaint upon incredible journeys and endure the resultant miseries without repining.
  
  In 1938, Lord Auckland abolished the pilgrim tax, after which the number of pilgrims increased.
  
  The Kumbh Melas of the past, albeit with different regional names, attracted large attendance and have been religiously significant to the Hindus for centuries. They have included initiation of followers to the akharas, discourses of religious leaders, and religious music. The 1834 Islamic encyclopaedia Yadgar-i-Bahaduri written in Lucknow described the Prayag festival and its sanctity to the Hindus. It is also financially significant.
  
  Officials of the East India Company saw the Hindu pilgrimage as a means to collect large sums of revenue through a "pilgrim tax" and taxes on the trade that occurred during the festival. The British officials raised the tax to amount greater than average monthly income and the attendance fell drastically. The Prayagwal pandas resisted as the impact of the religious tax on the pilgrims became clear. According to colonial records, they had originally supported the tax; since the records of the Prayag Mela during this period were written by colonialists and missionaries, Macclean argues that they present a biased materialistic view.
  
  Baptist missionary John Chamberlain, who visited the 1824 Ardh Kumbh Mela at Haridwar, stated that a large number of visitors came there for trade. He also includes a 1814 letter from his missionary friend who distributed copies of the Gospel to the pilgrims and tried to convert some to Christianity. According to an 1858 account of the Haridwar Kumbh Mela by the British civil servant Robert Montgomery Martin, the visitors at the fair included people from a number of races and clime. Along with priests, soldiers, and religious mendicants, the fair had horse traders from Bukhara, Kabul, Turkistan as well as Arabs and Persians. The festival had roadside merchants of food grains, confectioners, clothes, toys and other items. Thousands of pilgrims in every form of transport as well as on foot marched to the pilgrimage site, dressed in colourful costumes, some without clothes, occasionally shouting "Mahadeo Bol" and "Bol, Bol" together. At night the river banks and camps illuminated with oil lamps, fireworks burst over the river, and innumerable floating lamps set by the pilgrims drifted downstream of the river. Several Hindu rajas, Sikh rulers and Muslim Nawabs visited the fair. Europeans watched the crowds and few Christian missionaries distributed their religious literature at the Hardwar Mela, wrote Martin.
  
  Prior to 1838, British officials collected taxes but provided no infrastructure or services to the pilgrims. This changed particularly after 1857. According to Amna Khalid, the Kumbh Melas emerged as one of the social and political mobilisation venues and the colonial government became keen on monitoring these developments after the Indian rebellion of 1857. The government deployed police to gain this intelligence at the grassroots level of Kumbh Mela. The British officials in co-operation with the native police also made attempts to improve the infrastructure, and movement of pilgrims to avoid a stampede, detect sickness, and the sanitary conditions at the Melas. Reports of cholera led the officials to cancel the pilgrimage, but the pilgrims went on "passive resistance" and stated they preferred to die rather than obey the official orders. Mark Twain also visited Kumbh Mela of Prayagraj in 1895 for which he wrote:
  
  The positive impact of kumbh mela is this festival helps preserve cultural traditions and promotes the values of spirituality, unity, and devotion.
  
  It is wonderful, the power of a faith like that, that can make multitudes upon multitudes of the old and weak and the young and frail enter without hesitation or complaint upon incredible journeys and endure the resultant miseries without repining.
  
  In 1938, Lord Auckland abolished the pilgrim tax, after which the number of pilgrims increased.