Gen Z’s kanwariyas: barefoot and bereft

By 6 a.m. on August 9, Har Ki Pauri in Haridwar was already a wall of saffron. Steam rose off the Ganga in the early light as men and boys ranging from their teens to their late 60s – barefoot, dressed in T-shirts bearing images of Hindu gods, speakers strapped to bamboo kanwars blaring remixed bhajans – waded into the river that Hindus believe is holy.

By the afternoon, these men had become a river of their own. They flowed down National Highway 58, headed back to their homes, mostly across Delhi, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh. Some were travelling as far as Jammu, Rajasthan, and Bihar, walking hundreds of kilometres with pots of Gangajal (water) balanced on rods across their shoulders: the kanwars.

Among the 50 million that the Uttarakhand government said came to Haridwar to gather water, was Rajat Singh, 21. A Rajput and a first-time kanwariya, or carrier of the kanwar, from Kathua in Jammu, Singh began his 600-km journey on July 17. He walked 25-30 km every day and slept in roadside camps for 26 days.

Singh dropped out of college two years ago and has not been able to find a job. He feels the weight of his responsibility to support his family. His father owns a marginal farm in the Bani hills, but is unable to support a family of five, including Singh’s mother and two younger siblings. Amid the uncertainty around his employment, Singh decided to start blogging. His Instagram profile, which has 41,000 followers, describes him as a ‘kattar Hindu’ (staunch Hindu). He has 99,000 followers on Facebook.

During his 26-day Kanwar Yatra, he blogged daily, documenting his journey on social media, mostly through reels set to remixes of devotional songs and timestamped with mile markers. He gained 10,000 followers during the journey.

“Initially, I used to blog about some scenic places near my village, but that hardly worked. I gained over 10,000 followers when I completed the Amarnath Yatra for the first time, three years ago. The second time, this number crossed 15,000 when I visited Himachal Pradesh’s Bharmour for the Manimahesh Kailash Yatra,” he said.

This time, he knew exactly what he had to do: document everything – picking up the Gangajal, carrying the water, walking barefoot, and making sure it didn’t touch the ground before he offered it at the temple.

He has sketchy details on the pilgrimage’s origins and traditions though. “Maybe I would know that from mythological books,” he says, adding, “I am not well-versed in Hindi and Sanskrit. We were taught Urdu rather than Hindi in school,” he explained. Singh is one of at least 50 people The Hindu spoke to at the Haridwar ghat, where between 2 and 4 million descended, to scoop up river water each day, from July 30 to August 11. Like him, most did not know the history of the yatra, nor had they paused to question its now Mardi Gras-like vibe. In some aspects the kanwariyas were like the youth from the protests at Jantar Mantar. Both worried about the future and jobs, and were adept at using social media. But the kanwariyas deferred to the state, and celebrated what they saw as the government taking care of them, not seeing themselves as a vote bank.

Half the highway had been cordoned off for them to walk and for oversized religious tableaux to move in procession with DJs belting out music, not always religious. There were roadside camps set up for their rest and refreshment. Rose petals were showered on them from a helicopter as they walked. All this, they felt, was due to them.

They didn’t think it was a contradiction that many had found fault with Muslims offering Namaz on the road. Nitin Chaudhary, 26, said the minority community enjoyed similar privileges when the socialist Samajwadi Party (SP) was in power in Uttar Pradesh from 2012-17.

Walk this way

Among those filling their kanwars at the Ganga ghat was 24-year-old Aniket, who uses only his first name and identifies himself as a Dalit. A linesman with the electricity department in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar, he had taken six days of unpaid leave to make the journey for the fifth year running.

He earns ₹9,500 a month and a little extra from a side hustle. This pilgrimage costs him a substantial part of his monthly income, even though he took the cheapest bus to reach Haridwar and a langar (community kitchen) will feed him on his walk back. He slept in a dormitory near the Ganga ghat, which cost him ₹1,000. He also spent ₹3,000 on repairing and decorating his kanwar.

“A few hundred rupees went on mobile recharge and some on souvenirs for friends and family,” he said. The expenditure did not seem to trouble him. Nor did the prospect of walking hundreds of kilometres carrying several litres of holy water. But when asked why a kanwariya carries Gangajal in the first place, he shrugged.

Aniket had never heard the stories commonly invoked in popular accounts of the Kanwar tradition, including mythological legends connecting Ravana and Parashuram with journeys involving Shiva and sacred water. He did not know how the pilgrimage had begun or why devotees, or for that matter he himself, carry the water to Shiva temples. He was not embarrassed by the gap. “Nahi pata iske baare mein (I don’t know about it),” he said, simply.

He had never questioned it. For him, religion was simply something people had practised this way for generations. He could not say what the water was meant to accomplish. He simply knew that it had to be carried.

Aniket stood drenched on the top step of the Ganga ghat, swamped by the excesses of humanity overcrowded in an area meant for not more than 10,000. Around him were sadhus on torn mats, people discarding old clothes on the steps after a dip in the river. There was the sight of leftover food and the stench of garbage.

Both sides now

After the nationwide protests that began in Delhi and spread across India, Gen Z’s liberal face showed itself clearly: Neha, from a fauji family that votes for BJP, who chose to align with the left; Mohammad Irfan, the vendor whose daily wisdom resonated with many; the swathes of people from across the gender spectrum who came because it felt like a safe space to be in.

About 270 km away at Haridwar, it was mostly men. Nishi Kumar, 26, from Meerut, was one of the few women kanwariyas. She said it was the same as at the sports goods manufacturing factory where she worked. She spoke little and kept her eyes on the road, watching her steps and the people around her to avoid brushing against the men in the crowd. “Women are competing and going ahead of men in almost everything. Then why not in the Kanwar Yatra?” she said.

Nishi wore full-length pants and a dupatta; her brothers wore shorts. She was also unsure of whether the camps would have separate toilets and sleeping arrangements for women. She had to convince her family to let her go for the yatra. They were reluctant for her to join a procession dominated by men.

Uttar Pradesh has recorded the highest absolute number of reported crimes against women in the country, according to the 2024 National Crime Records Bureau data.

Nishi wanted women to go to college and have a career, though she herself has not been able to go beyond school because of her family’s financial constraints. She also felt men must be more involved in household chores, but called live-in relationships ashleel (vulgar), and inter-religious marriages “totally unacceptable”.

Not everyone around Nishi agreed that women belonged in the Yatra. Tushar Kumar, 24, an electrician at a mobile repair firm in Delhi’s Shahdara, was uncomfortable with her presence. “Women should only go to places where their safety is ensured,” he said.

Tushar is a Thakur but uses Kumar instead of Chauhan as his surname. He said his parents believed it would improve his chances of getting a government job. He was more accepting of live-in relationships, but “they should remain limited to cities and not reach smaller towns”.

Politics at the yatra

Shivam Sharma, 22, from Katha village in Baghpat, U.P., who joined his father’s business of agriculture exports, arrived in Haridwar with a group of 29 people. The group was led by a 63-year-old, who was undertaking his 40th Kanwar Yatra. The group crossed caste lines. It included Vivek Yadav, 28, a teacher from an OBC community.

Vivek, who earns just enough to support himself from the private school he works at, objected to the language and tone of the Jantar Mantar protesters, but agreed with what they were demanding. He had himself appeared several times for police constable recruitment exams. On some occasions, he said, examination papers were leaked, on others, the results were withheld.

“They should have minded the language they used for [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi,” said Vivek, who accepted that he too abused, but only with friends or when he was angry, never with “elders or gods”.

All the men said the Uttar Pradesh government, led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, had done wonderfully well with the arrangements for them. They weren’t as appreciative of the Uttarakhand government, which, they said, were making them walk extra with “unnecessary barricades”. There were also no arrangements for free food or camps to rest.

Shivam has another complaint: Uttarakhand didn’t bring in singers to perform the aarti at the Ganga. “They are still stuck running Anuradha Paudwal’s aarti on an old tape recorder. When the yatra is getting modern, the State is stuck in old ways,” he added.

He felt the music shouldn’t go the other extreme either, with Bollywood tunes and the frenzy of throbbing noise-polluting boom boxes. “There are anti-social elements everywhere, but that cannot be used to defame the entire yatra,” he said. “I don’t drink, I don’t smoke and we (his group) don’t carry any music,” he added.

A DJ mounted atop a vessel that flashed multi-coloured lights, blasted a song in praise of U.P.’s Chief Minister. “Bhole nachwa diye Yogi ne, rang jama diye Yogi ne. Akhilesh ne hukum sunaya tha, DJ par ban lagaya tha. (Yogi made Shiv dance, Yogi brought the celebration alive. Akhilesh had ordered a ban on DJs).” Then the punchline: “2017 ke election mein Bhole ne ise haraya tha (In the 2017 election, Bhole – a reference to Yogi Adityanath – defeated him).”

The burden of tradition and expectation

“The Gangajal is not the heaviest thing these young men carry,” said Sachin Gupta, 34, a journalist who has been covering the Kanwar Yatra since 2015 for two major Hindi publications. He has watched the yatra grow in scale and change in character since Adityanath came to power in U.P. in 2017. This year, he remained on NH-58 through the yatra, covering it as a freelancer.

Gupta said the yatra had become increasingly loud and rowdy over the years. When he began covering it, he said, the focus was more on the pilgrimage itself. Now, the spectacle around it has grown bigger.

“DJs, modified vehicles, slogans, and displays of strength often seem to compete with the religious purpose of the journey,” he said, adding that instances of kanwariyas thrashing people had also risen.

He sees the young kanwariya men carrying the expectations of their parents, of society: what it means to them to be a son, a man, a Hindu, and a member of the local community is reflected here. “Those expectations may not surface when they talk about the yatra, but become visible when the conversation moves to attitudes around women, relationships, religion, or politics,” Gupta said.

ishita.mishra@thehindu.co.in

Edited by Sunalini Mathew and Amarjot Kaur