6,233 voices, one river: Nashik's mass aarti enters the Guinness record books

At dusk on the Godavari's banks at Ramtirth, Nashik, 6,233 people from 650 villages — tribal communities among them — raised their lamps together in a single Maha Aarti, and Guinness World Records certified it on the spot. President Droupadi Murmu performed the aarti as the ceremony formally hoisted the flag for the Nashik-Trimbakeshwar Simhastha Mahakumbh Mela 2027, the great pilgrimage that returns to the city every 12 years. The gathering more than doubled the previous record of 3,800 people performing an aarti together — less a contest than a rehearsal: a city of villages practising, lamp by lamp, how to move as one.