Raksha Bandhan:
Raksha Bandhan is a popular, traditionally Hindu, annual rite or ceremony that is central to the same-named festival celebrated in South Asia and other parts of the world that are heavily influenced by Hindu culture. On this day, sisters of all ages tie the Rakhi, a talisman or amulet, around the wrists of their brothers, symbolically protecting them, receiving a gift in return, and traditionally investing the brothers with a share of the responsibility of their potential care.
Raksha Bandhan History
Raksha Bandhan is celebrated on the last day of the Hindu lunar calendar month of Shravana, which falls in August each year. This ritual is now commonly referred to as “Raksha Bandhan,” which means “the bond of protection, obligation, or care” in Sanskrit. Until the mid-twentieth century, the expression was more commonly applied to a similar ritual, also held on the same day and with precedent in ancient Hindu texts, in which a domestic priest ties amulets, charms, or threads on the wrists of his patrons, or changes their sacred thread, and receives monetary gifts; this is still the case in some places.The sister-brother festival, on the other hand, had names that varied depending on location, with some rendered as Saluno, Silono, and Rakhi. A Saluno-related ritual involved the sisters placing barley shoots behind their brothers’ ears.
Raksha Bandhan has special significance for married women because it is rooted in the practise of territorial or village exogamy, in which a bride marries outside of her natal village or town and her parents do not visit her in her married home by custom. Every year, a large number of married Hindu women return to their parents’ homes in rural north India, where village exogamy is prevalent. Their brothers, who usually live with their parents or nearby, will occasionally travel to their sisters’ married home to accompany them back. Many younger married women arrive a few weeks earlier and stay until the ceremony.The brothers act as lifelong liaisons between their sisters’ married and parental homes, as well as potential security stewards.
The Raksha Bandhan festival has become more symbolic in urban India, where families are increasingly nuclear, but it remains extremely popular. The rituals associated with this festival have spread beyond their traditional areas and been transformed by technology and migration, movies, social interaction, and promotion by politicised Hinduism as well as the nation state.
There is also a transformed tradition of voluntary kin relations among women and men who are not blood relatives, achieved through the tying of rakhi amulets, which has cut across caste and class lines, as well as Hindu and Muslim divisions. Other figures, such as a matriarch or a person in authority, may be included in the ceremony in ritual acknowledgement of their benefaction in some communities or contexts.
raksha bandhan 2022 date: 11th August 2022
raksha bandhan 2022 day: Thursday
Raksha Bandhan 2022 Muhurat time: Sawan month’s full moon will begin at 10:39 a.m. on August 11 and will end at 7.05 a.m. on August 12. Rakhi is a Hindu festival celebrated on August 11.
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