Child Of 1857

The puranic legend, argues Maclean, was forcefully grafted on to a pre-existing local bathing festival called the Magh Mela in order to circumvent an increasingly repressive British government; and to convince authorities that the local celebration had religious sanction. The British, says Maclean, had a love-hate relationship with the annual winter fair ever since they took control of Allahabad in 1806. Afraid of cholera epidemics that felled their soldiers in the fort facing the mela, and daunted by the sheer magnitude of the administrative work it involved, the magh mela was still a tax collector's dream come true. Even beggars had to pay a pilgrim's tax of one rupee each for a holy dip, at a time when a family could live on a rupee for a month.