Today is Raksha Bandhan (or Rakhi), the Indian holiday where sisters are supposed to tie a bracelet around their brothers 
as a symbol of sisterly devotion. The basics of the holiday are at Wikipedia:
The festival is marked by the tying of a rakhi, or holy thread by the sister on the wrist of her brother. The brother in return offers a gift to his sister and vows to look after her. The brother and sister traditionally feed each other sweets.
It is not necessary that the rakhi can be given only to a brother by birth; any male can be “adopted” as a brother by tying a rakhi on the person, whether they are cousins or a good friend. Indian history is replete with women asking for protection, through rakhi, from men who were neither their brothers, nor Hindus themselves. Rani Karnavati of Chittor sent a rakhi to the Mughal Emperor Humayun when she was threatened by Bahadur Shah of Mewar. Humayun abandoned an ongoing military campaign to ride to her rescue. (link)
Though the holiday is strongly associated with Hinduism, in my experience it is somewhat of a secularized, “cultural” holiday both in India and the diaspora, where other religious groups participate. (I’m not sure if it’s absolutely universal — do Indian Christians and Muslims celebrate Rakhi? Is there Rakhi in Bangladesh or Pakistan? Based on this article, the answer to the second question is maybe.) Indeed, these days, it isn’t surprising to see Rakhi designs that contain references to Indian and western superheroes (check out this cool Spiderman Rakhi), alongside the more traditional designs.
In Haryana, a group of women tied Rakhis around trees, as an environmental gesture. (“Her other brother is a tree,” one bystander quipped.) Apparently the best-selling brand of Rakhis (“Laloos”) in the state of Bihar are named after the current Railway Minister, Laloo Prasad Yadav. (“But these Rakhis are only available on the black market!” the same bystander wryly noted.) And Indian PM Manmohan Singh recognized the holiday in a typical fashion.
Whoever invents a Rakhi that doesn’t slip off within 24 hours is going to be rich man/woman.
I tied a rakhi on my brother’s wrist this past weekend and he still had on my rakhi from last year.
What the hell? Really? Maybe it’s because I don’t have a sister and I end up tying ones that my cousin sends me through the mail onto myself. I don’t think I am alone in my belief that those darn things just don’t stay on though.
It’s all dependent on the thread/ribbon/string. Those silky threads don’t hold for 10 minutes. Thread/ribbon/string with a bit of texture/teeth stays put. (We used to make rakhis when we were kids.)
Someone should copy the livestrong bracelet for this..a bandhani printed band with ‘bhaiyya rocks’ would be cool, I think. 🙂
The old school cotton thread ones with a red dot fuzzy cotton thing on it last long. They’re cheap, last long, and they don’t spit glitter all over you.
I usually take mine off before Dashera.
Ah Raksha Bandhan – that special day when the girl you thought you were getting somewhere with holds you down and ties a Rakhi on your wrist.
I am pro-Raksha Bandhan but say this to highlight a prevailing assumption the festival is pan-Indian in scope. The fact it is practically unheard of down in the southern states and I wonder if it is any prevalent at all in the eastern states. Seems, like familiarity with Hindi, yet another case of “since we do it it must be Indian (or Hindu…) and therefore, if you don’t do it you aren’t Indian (or Hindu…)”
Every year, I would look for the hugest, most decorated rakhi to tie on my brother’s wrist. They usually covered two inches of surface area and were full of tinsel and glitter. To his credit, he proudly wore them until they ‘fell off’ even if his friends teased him. what a great brother. this is for you, G.
Hear ya, Wantok. Anyone heard of KLPR ?
Jokes aside, some teenage girls and boys in my generation in India (“Good mix of East and West”, hah), quite unsure about how exactly to interact with the opposite sex, perverted Rakhi into a pathetic attempt at romance, (a little adventure while still staying safe). “Rakhi-brothers” and “rakhi-sisters” were often suspect in college. Uneasy!
Like Pooja said, I noticed around holi that one of my brothers still had the thread from the rakhi I gave him, tightly tied around his wrist. All the decorative stuff had fallen off, but the thread was solid. I’m sure Pooja can find something symbolic and poetic in that 🙂
I also send rakhi to my sister-cousins and a very special girlfriend. If the point of the holiday is to celebrate our relationships, pray for the safety and health of those close to us, and wish them success and pledge our support for their lives, why should girl relationships have any less stake or significance in the holiday? I’m on a mutinous mission to change the face of Rakhi, by including girls!
Cool picture and links, amardeep! In response to your question, I don’t know of any Christians who celebrate Rakshabandhan. Dunno about Muslims. Almost unheard of in most parts of South India 10-15 yrs ago. That’s changing in the cities because of significant North Indian populations.
Happy Rakshabandhan y’all.
he fact it is practically unheard of down in the southern states and I wonder if it is any prevalent at all in the eastern states.
Bengalis call is bhai-fota, but I don’t think we do it at the same time as others. Usually, someone has to remind me.
DesiDancer, there is a story in the Summer issue of Kahani by picture-book diva Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen about two girlfriends (one desi and the other not) exchanging rakhis. You are onto something.
Yep. Meant to make mention of this in my first post. My southie husband find raksha bandhan very “exotic” ;).
Awesome, DD. I take it you would also approve of taking that mission a step further by encouraging men to send rakhis to sisters/cousin-sisters/close women friends? Converse-rakhi?
I don’t pretend to know more than the actual people from South India reading this, but Wikipedia does list a version of Rakhi that is practiced in the southern states:
They don’t mention anything about sisters and brothers, so I wonder if it really is the “same” holiday, or just a “similar” one.
I just saw a Bob the Builder rakhri … what next? Dora? Diego?
If you have no clue who those characters are, go spend some time talking to a 3 year old =)
The kid with Rakhis all the way upto his elbow in school was always a really sad one. All the girls made sure they’d tie a Rakhi on the one’s they didn’t like (that way).
The dude who had the least amount of Rakhis on his hand? Stud. He knew it, the girls knew it, and with women voting on the strength of their strings, there could only be one – The Gujarati, middle school Idol. [cue in American Idol music]
Navratan Kurma – KLPR? So wrong but so funny. My Hindi isnÂ’t that great so it took me a while to figure it out.
Man….it was hilarious!!!In my high school days, deep in the remote villages of Madhya Pradesh……..if a boy liked a girl and if she rejected him…..immediately he made her his “Rakhi- sister”. Of course this guy would be a bully and she became of limits to all other guys( as she is his sister now!!)…unless you could beat the crap outta him. there were a lot of pathetic Rakhi brothers and Rakhi sisters around including yours truly :-(. I just thank this is a holiday which is a little over the top…just like all other holidays. Rakhi or no rakhi, my sister ( not sisters) is specail to me and I will always care….. Cliff
What’s KLPR? I don’t get it. Explain please!
Amardeep Avan avittam and raksha bandhan have nothing in common except that they fall on the same day. The former is a vedic ritual when the guys wearing the sacred thread change it for the year. Chk out http://www.ramanuja.org/sv/rituals/upakarma/significance.html for more info.
If you understand Hindi…..KLPR is the same as KLPD…..substitute Rakhi for Dhoka, else it is Rakhi on an erection, plain and simple.
I read about Spider-man rakhis and Krrish rakhis too. I got my Rakhi from back home and I tied it today and called my Sister and she reminded me how I would want the “branded” rakhis. !!!!
I looked it up! KLPD:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=klpd
..when wikipedia is no help..
definitely. nobody ever suffered from being appreciated, is the way I look at it. girls shouldn’t be excluded from receiving caring and good wishes.
Sonia Kaur, I saw Barbie, Dora, Pokemon, Spongebob and a host of other heinous kiddy rakhis. sad, but true.
From what I have seen – not that it is representative – in Kerala, the only people who were doing Rakhi were RSS types.
Wow I’m clueless I simply had no idea. Victim to being in the west away from family :-(. My brother lives 20 minutes away but I see him about 2 times a year if that unless I run into him on the subway.
When I was in school in India a lot of the teachers used to “fund” rakhi days and bring in 100s of them and make all the girls tie it to the boys. It was their way of keeping the kids from hooking up and calm the badmashi that ensued from raging hormones. Perverse I realize because it made no difference. People still got their nookie on with the rakhi on!
Oye..what’s all this talk about southie states not reprezenting Rakhi? I hail from AP, and we sure as hell tied Rakhis..and how!! That was when me and my girl cousins got rich…aah…good ole’ times!
seriously, there needs to be a thread where we hash out the differences because so many of are brown to those around us, and we mistakenly conflate our own folkways which brown ways. how many times do we have to see “down south we don’t do it that way!” and someone else is like, “oh no you didn’t! in kerala we don’t marry our uncles like you people in tamil nadu!” “hey, mebee your caste, but here in millapararararzimalluamalalamam uncle-marrying iz da bomb!”
personal example: i talked about tonal languages once and manish said that punjabi was tonal (at least in part). on the other hand, manish wrote an essay once about the dichotomous gender roles in indian culture deriving from gendered languages, but i pointed out to him that bengali had no gender.
analogy: if a white person lives in a small village in china he might be the white person. if he has small white children they will be the white people. but if their children go live in europe all of a sudden they might realize that their father was finnish, and spaniards and italians are white, but very different.
just a please for understanding 🙂
By all means, guys, please avoid wearing rakhis with white string for so freakin’ long that the actual rakhi has fallen off and the string has turned gray or black from dirt. I’ve seen this. Yes, we know you love your “sisters”; you don’t need to prove it by showing off some “hip” new pre-gangrenous look.
This has been today’s Public Service Message about hygiene.
Sudipta also wrote up a nice sidebar to her Raksha Bandhan story for Kahani in which she explains how Tagore suggested all Indians exchange rakhis. “To create a sense of brotherhood between Indian people,” she explains.
Wikipedia’s inclusion of Avani Avittam with Raaksha-Bandan is ludicrous. Bee’s individual experience in AP will hardly correlate to the bulk of the population there. Razib’s request for understanding is commendable. His analogy is inappropriate in this situation. Why? The understanding, feeling of inclusion, etc. ought to start with those performing these ceremonies, not from those on the outside. Which translates to: when those from the north tie raakhis to those from the south, and not just amongst their own, understanding, empathy, support and all that will flow. Until then isn’t it more reasonable to expect undestanding that many practices in India are very regional, limited to certain communities, and unlikely to be appreciated by others if portrayed as pan-Indian? 🙂
“there needs to be a thread where we hash out the differences because so many of are brown to those around us”
I don’t even think this is a difference that needs to hashed out – simply because there are so many of such things in India, and frankly who cares. I am not judging it in anyway, I was merely pointing out a difference in customs based on my own personal observation, which could very well be totally wrong.
Though the holiday is strongly associated with Hinduism, in my experience it is somewhat of a secularized, “cultural” holiday both in India and the diaspora, where other religious groups participate.
I agree. Kind of like Christmas in the United States.
najeeb, i hadn’t read your comment, so it wasn’t addressed to you 🙂
I had no clue what this holiday was or why some brown boys had disintegrating strings around their wrists until the end of COLLEGE. I actually thought it was a Punjabi holiday until I was in grad school. Until then, I had no idea so many communities did it; until this thread, I had never heard of a South Indian fam celebrating it.
Christians do NOT do it, AFAIK. Anyway,I’m with Mr. Pooja. Mad exotic, yo. But very sweet. 🙂 I wish Malayalees would co-opt this with all the enthusiasm with which they borrow bhangra…
Razib:
1)Punjabi IS a tonal language (unlike any other Indo-Aryan language).
2)Although I have no evidence or research to back up the following statement, I would offer that gender roles in India have nothing to do with the fact that (most) Indo-Aryan languages gave grammatical gender. Lots of societies have rigid gender roles without having grammatical gender in their languages. By the way, to those that know, do Dravidian languages have grammatical gender?
Correction – “I would offer that gender roles in India have nothing to do with the fact that (most) Indo-Aryan languages HAVE grammatical gender.”
I hail from Andhra and fairly large towns (along with big cities) do celebrate Rakhi along with Janjyala Pournami on this day. I cant vouch for everyone, but almost all my frieds are aware of this festival.
I would offer that gender roles in India have nothing to do with the fact that (most) Indo-Aryan languages gave grammatical gender.
i doubt that either. and i am pretty sure it was a passing comment from manish who simply pointed out the correlation between gendered languages and strong gender roles in south asia…except that bengali has no gender! (which he didn’t know) the point is that people make innocent generalizations based on their own experience, and the atomization of american browns makes us particular unaware of differences across brownz.
People don’t seem to realise the extent to which the Indian middle class across India is starting to become very similar in tastes, temperment, frames of reference, and culturally in general. Leave alone Raakhi, even several holidays from the West are now becoming universal among the middle class…St. Valentine’s Day being the most striking example. If you watch some of the musical talent shows on Indian satellite television (like Sa Re Ga Ma, Fame Gurukul, Indian Idol, etc) you will see that young middle-class people from as far flung places as Mumbai, Calcutta, Hyderabad, Delhi, and even smaller tier towns like Ludhiana and Murshidabad, etc. have become very similar. Similar in language (Hinglish), values, and general outlook. Even South Indians and Assamese people have competed (and done very well) on these shows which are basically a showcase of Hindi culture. So it is no surprise to me that Raakhi too will gradually sweep the middle class, regardless of regional origin. Another thing I realised while watching these shows…these kids have more in common with each other, culturally, even if one is for example a Bengali and other is a Punjabi, than they do with rural people from THEIR OWN state! Their own grandfathers would have had nothing in common but now to due to many different forces, there is a massive homogenisation and conformity-building taking place. These are interesting times we live in.
By the way I love Raakhi. It’s always at my parents’ house every year, and takes well over an hour for ALL the sisters/girl cousins to tie on ALL the guys, across TWO generations. Then we eat!
People don’t seem to realise the extent to which the Indian middle class across India is starting to become very similar in tastes
my relatives in bangladeshi are heavily influenced by hindi films. i’m not. my ‘bengali’ cultural habits are transmitted from my parents, who reflect bangladeshi sensibilities from the 1970s. i suspect there are some here whose families hail from gujarat, punjab, kerala, etc. who can relate. the chinese practice of foot binding persisted longested in sabah in malaysian borneo. diasporas often “freeze” and serve as archeological treasure troves (e.g., quebecois preserves archaic features which standard post-revolutionary french no longer has). it would be interesting in in a few decades someone from the anthropological survey of india was sent to the USA to study the 1st & 2nd gen born abroad since they preserved customs and traditions long gone in the homeland (this might be particularly true for small regional cultures).
Amardeep, the Rakhi does not resemble the sacred thread in any way. The sacred thread goes over the shoulder and down the torso.
Razib, do you mean that Bengali has no gender compared to other Indian languages, say Hindi, similar to the lack of gender differences in English as compared to French?
that would be weird.
the joy of celebrating a festival such as this is the act of participation in a ritual that has been performed countless times since whenever. it has an immensely humanizing effect on me at least (i’m usually a lemur hanging upside down on a shagbark willow most of the time). and sometimes the expression of faith just boggles my mind. my dear old mum has been sending a rakhi to a “muhbola” (spoken) brother for longer than i have been on the planet – year after year, without fail – and he’s been sending a token dollar or the equivalent ever since. but what does it really mean some might ask… does it mean that a brother must protect his sister through everything, come what may? does it suggest Homo punjica are a primitive life form for forcing male protection on to female of the species? doesnt really matter? it is an expression of faith and love, and logic, my chubby chihuahuas, gets trumped through and through.
so relax y’all. if you got a rakhi – i rejoice for and with you. if you didnt, well maybe if you’re good in this lifetime, god will recycle you as a shoulder-shrugging punjoo in the next. so be good, hear and talk to yu next year.
Sorry for the “All Bold”.
Amitabh,
By the way, to those that know, do Dravidian languages have grammatical gender? I can answer for Tamil, but first, what do you mean by grammatical gender? Do you mean nouns with gender?
Razib, do you mean that Bengali has no gender compared to other Indian languages, say Hindi, similar to the lack of gender differences in English as compared to French?
yes.
Razib:
The Indo-Caribbean people (Trinidad, Guyana etc.) have preserved many rural traditions from 19th century Uttar Pradesh/Bihar which are now obsolete in India. There are quite a lot of Bhojpuri folk-songs preserved in that community as well, with lots of archaic linguistic features.
I recieved many rakhi bands when I lived in Delhi, fun times… fun times..