Reuters reveals how as India election looms, politics infiltrates the world’s biggest religious festival

Reuters was ahead of international media in examining how Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is using the world’s biggest religious festival, the Hindu Kumbh Mela, to advance its Hindu nationalist agenda. The federal and Uttar Pradesh state governments, controlled by the BJP, are spending $600 million on the giant festival, winning plaudits from attendees. The event is also being used to build support for a hugely controversial project to construct a Hindu temple on the site of the 16th century Babri Mosque that was destroyed by a Hindu mob in 1992.