On Wednesday, 26 February 2025, the day of Mahashivratri, the 45-day grand spectacle of the first Maha Kumbh of independent Bharat concluded at Prayagraj, with an estimated more than one crore pilgrims from across the country taking the holy dip at Triveni Sangam on its final day. Widely hailed as the largest peaceful spiritual gathering ever witnessed by humanity, this year’s Maha Kumbh took place amid a rare celestial alignment that occurs only once every 144 years.

This piece discusses the key organisational and management lessons from the Maha Kumbh. But before that, I step back to provide background on this unprecedented event.

To put into perspective how monumental a task it was to manage the mammoth Maha Kumbh 2025, I revisit the story of the 2019 Ardh Kumbh Mela, held in Prayagraj. The 2019 edition saw an estimated 24–25 million devotees take a holy dip at Triveni Sangam—a record at the time.

Furthermore, Kumbh Mela 2019 secured a place in the Guinness World Records in three categories:

The story of Maha Kumbh 2025 unfolds in the following paragraphs. However, suffice it to say that as this Maha Kumbh comes to an end, it surpasses the success of 2019 Kumbh by a significant margin and offers invaluable management lessons.

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The foremost lesson of Maha Kumbh 2025 was universal brotherhood and sisterhood. As millions upon millions of devotees from every corner of India thronged Triveni Sangam and mingled with hundreds of thousands of international devotees and tourists from across the globe, they became part of one vast melting pot, where differences of caste, class, race, and religion were erased.

It was a profound lesson from Bharat to the world.

But how large was the turnout for Maha Kumbh 2025? Here is what is known at the time of writing this piece.

As per the official figures released by the Government of India through a PIB note at the conclusion of Maha Kumbh 2025, Prayagraj—a city with a population of 12.65 lakh—hosted more than 66 crore pilgrims from across the world over 45 days. And what an unprecedented number it is—greater than the combined population of the United States of America (345,426,571) and Indonesia (283,487,931), the third and fourth most populous countries in the world.

Even if one assumes some degree of double counting in these meticulously curated figures and deducts a few million, it still remains a spectacle unparalleled in human........

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