The count has been updated, the names read out, and the compensation checks prepared. This is the grotesque choreography of Indian public life: Forty-one people crushed to death at a political rally for a Tamil superstar and wannabe politician in Karur. It is a number that should shame us, but which will, within the week, become just another footnote in the nation’s vast, un-audited ledger of preventable deaths.
This tragedy is not an isolated incident. It is a symptom of a deep, systemic sickness—a national fetish for spectacle that is consistently prioritised over the sanctity of human life. The stampede is not an act of God; it is the inevitable outcome of a system that buckles under political or religious pressure and laughs in the face of safety regulations. This is the Republic of the Stampede, where administrative incompetence is our most enduring national characteristic.
The sheer, sickening irony is the geographical spread of this failure. The tragedy travels seamlessly across the map, proving that no region or event is immune to this fatal negligence. In the North, 121 people—mostly women and children—perish in Hathras in 2024 at a religious satsang, where followers stampede in a rush of blind devotion, while the state machinery busies itself trying to control the narrative. Even at the greatest of religious festivals, the Kumbh Mela, where millions gather, crowd-related deaths occur with horrifying regularity, often covered up and casually dismissed as a ‘logistical inevitability.’ We don’t even have the actual number of people who were killed in the last Kumbh, as the numbers could hurt the image of certain politicians and political parties.
It isn’t just the religious gathering that has such callous crowd management, nor are such tragedies restricted to the illiterate masses. Kerala witnessed the horrific, utterly avoidable crowd crush at the Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) late last year, leaving four young people dead, all because an auditorium meant for a thousand was crammed far beyond its capacity for a celebrity singer.
Kerala, despite its progressive image, treats its temple festivals as a recurring, spectacular invitation to disaster. We saw the same murderous incompetence on the narrow, treacherous paths of Sabarimala, where the lack of adequate crowd control mechanisms led to the tragic death of 104 pilgrims in the 2011 stampede. And who can forget the horrific morning of April 10, 2016, when the competitive fireworks display at the Puttingal Temple in Kollam went awry, incinerating more than 111 lives? That explosion was not just a blast of gunpowder; it was a loud pronouncement that religious zealotry trumps the High Court’s order.
The cycle is tragically simple: A political leader needs a ‘wave’ like the one in Karur, a temple needs utsavam fanfare, or an urban body needs to host a spectacle, even if it is just a crush for a ticket counter at a film promotional event. The administration, scared of upsetting the vote-bank or the religious lobby, grants permission for 3,000 people when they know 50,000 will turn up. And the sheer audacity of organisers—like those who expected 3,000 but saw 70,000 throng the bridge in Varanasi in 2016, leading to 24 deaths—goes unpunished. Similarly, the 2014 Dussehra celebration in Patna left 33 people dead simply because of an overcrowded exit.
There are multiple tragedies waiting to happen. Look at the preparations for the upcoming festive season. What do you see in the metropolitan heartlands? Whether it is the Durga pandals in Kolkata or the Ganesha mandaps of Mumbai, most are hastily assembled temporary structures, mere glorified fire traps of bamboo, cloth, and shoddy electrical wiring. These structures mock every conceivable fire safety standard. The risk of a blaze, a collapse, or a panic-driven crush is astronomical, yet the authorities simply look the other way.
This is where the criminal absurdity of the situation lies. We are living in the 21st century, a country launching rockets to the moon, yet we manage human throngs with a colonial-era policing model that relies on lathis, noise, and divine intervention. We have all the documentation: The BPR&D Guidelines, the NDMA protocols, judicial inquiries. These reports all insist on one core principle: scientific assessment of carrying capacity and the strict adherence to safety infrastructure.
But who enforces this? Not the police, who are busy managing the VVIP’s security. Not the municipal corporations, whose officials are terrified of receiving a late-night phone call from a politician. The very idea of depoliticising crowd management is viewed as a revolutionary act.
The queues in many of our temples are dysfunctional—except for rare, shining examples like Tirupati—because the priority is the display of devotion, not the dignity of the devotee. This is the cynical trade-off we make every season: we prioritise the smooth flow of ritual and political messaging over the safe flow of people.
The lives lost in Karur, Hathras, Kollam, Sabarimala, and CUSAT demand more than a condolence tweet and an ex gratia payment. They require a fundamental shift in our collective mindset, a rejection of the idea that spectacle is worth a life. We must enforce a set of non-negotiable laws that mandate criminal prosecution for any breach of capacity or safety. And it isn’t just the organisers of such events who should be held responsible. The civil authorities who sanctioned the event, the police authorities who failed to uphold safety standards and the law, and the VIPs who risked human lives for their own selfish glory, should all be held responsible and punished under the law. Otherwise, the next tragedy is not just inevitable—it is already funded, planned, and approved. Our tolerance for this recurring tragedy is the most significant reflection of our failure as a civilised society.
