Disaster has struck the Sabarimala pilgrimage in Kerala before, and it is clear that lessons were not learnt. Else, more than a hundred devotees to the famous Lord Ayyappa temple may not have died. Unmanageable crowds and clueless authorities combined to cause last week’s tragedy. The portents were there all through this pilgrimage season at Sabarimala. A near stampede had occurred only a few days earlier when a surging queue broke rope barricades. The Kerala high court repeatedly asked the Travancore Devaswom Board to put enough personnel in place to prevent people from entering the queues through alternative paths. The Idukki collector had warned that the surge of devotees through the forest path in Pulmedu might become unmanageable on Makar Sankranti. But those in charge refused to be forearmed. This is similar to stampede-related tragedies at other religious centres. Devotees were killed in large numbers at the Mangah Ashram at Kunda in Uttar Pradesh’s Pratapgarh district in March last year, and at the Naina Devi temple in Himachal Pradesh in August 2008. In circumstances that were near identical, high fatalities were recorded at the Naina Devi shrine in 1978 as well. Minor unpredicted developments caused stampedes that took lives because the authorities had not prepared well.
On the tragic evening of January 14, a crowd of over 2.5 lakh devotees, mostly from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, had reached atop the hill in Pulmedu trudging the narrow forest path from Vandiperiyar through the Periyar Tiger Reserve. Apart from makeshift tents they put up, there were no facilities in the area, not even the necessary illumination. Apparently there were only four policemen to manage the rush of lakhs of devotees and one of them, it is said, had gone away to see the Makarajyothi and Makaravilakku. This is a telling commentary on the state of affairs. While the V.S. Achuthanandan government has ordered a judicial inquiry, it should not be difficult to determine why the police deployment was so pathetic, especially in such difficult terrain. The sequence of events suggests that as dusk fell, devotees and vehicles jostled each other to descend the path. It required the mere overturning of a jeep to trigger the stampede.
Pilgrim numbers visiting Sabarimala have been swelling by crores each year. Clearly, the Kerala government has betrayed no signs of understanding that it needs to upgrade infrastructure and other facilities to cope with the rush of devotees from all parts of the country. After a stampede in 1999 killed 55 people, a judicial panel had asked the authorities to develop infrastructure on all routes used by pilgrims so that crowd management may not become a casualty. Not only was this not heeded, this year the police appears to have allowed lakhs of people to climb to Pulmedu from January 12 onwards. It is said this was to facilitate brisk business for petty traders with whom they were hand in glove. In the chaos following the stampede the state’s much-hyped disaster management authority stayed in slumber. The lack of relief work in the initial hours led to a rise in the death toll. In this respect too, the Sabarimala disaster appears little different from previous accidents at other shrines. The unimaginativeness and slow-footedness of the authorities is self-evident. Just contrast this callous treatment of ordinary people with the elaborate arrangements made at the time of VIP visits.
In the wake of the tragedy, experts have urged the government to implement the Sabarimala masterplan. Serious thought must also be given to the Kerala high court’s suggestion that the temple be kept open throughout the year, instead of only for three months. This would ensure that lakhs of pilgrims do not arrive at once. Flexibility on the part of priests who oppose this can help save lives.