The electoral consequences of mass religious events: India's Kumbh Mela

Abstract Mass ritualized gatherings like pilgrimages are central to religious practice globally. Do they generate votes for religious parties? The events may heighten religiosity, enlarging support for parties seen as owning religious policy issues. Such parties might also co‐opt the events to organize and campaign. We evaluate the electoral impact of India's Kumbh Mela, a Hindu festival considered the world's biggest human assembly, leveraging its astrologically determined timing combined with districts’ proximity by rail to the festival sites. The Kumbh Mela boosts Hindu nationalists’ vote share. Mechanisms tests suggest it does so by increasing religious orthodoxy—seen in the adoption of Brahminical dietary practices—and by strengthening party capacity. There are mixed effects on communal conflict. The events are electorally polarizing; they cause India's main secular‐leaning party to perform better in regions with denser concentrations of religious minorities. Our study offers a new account of how confessional parties make inroads in multiethnic democracies.