LUCKNOW: With the Mahakumbh-2025 going on in its full glory where lakhs of visitors are flocking the congregation and taking holy dip in Sangma seeking salvation, the pandas or traditional priests in a camp at Sangam banks, are busy day in and day out tracing the roots of devotees through digitised family records, most of it going back to many decades. These pandas locate and share details of the genealogy their jajmans (clients) at the click of the mouse.At a time when the age-old family structure is going through the process of fragmentation resulting in the disintegration of joint families into nuclear ones, the camp in Maha Kumbh Mela is helping the visitors tracing their ancestry.With the digitisation of genealogies, the family trees with encapsulated information of many generations of an individual are available at the online platform. The process of digitisation has also helped over 20,000 ‘teerth purohits’ by relieving them from the maintenance of their traditional ledgers containing information about generations and generations of ‘Jajmans’.Kulvriksh, a Vadodara-based startup, touted to be the India’s first digital platform dealing in genealogy and family history, has set up its base at Mahakumbh’s Sector 20. They claim to have already connected over 90,000 families across the country.At the camp, the visitors can create their family tree for free, write and record biography, search for their ancestors and families who might have visited the Kumbh earlier some time and also update day-to-day events.It is offering its users a family tree template featuring multiple tree, chart views, timelines, various mapping tools and excess online records. It helps one save names, dates, photos and videos.According to Amod Mishra, the Kulvriksh founder, they have traced the ancestry of Lord Ram, the country’s first Deputy PM and Union Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, revolutionary Bhagat Singh, former UP CM and Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, Padma Shri Vishnu Pandya, and others.Mishra says forgetting or losing the track of the ancestors is like a river without a source or a tree without roots. “With every family having its own genealogy, a family tree encourages the newer generation to get acquainted with their ancestors to know their stories and understand their origin,” he adds.
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