Of all the Hindu festivals, Raksha Bandhan has the simplest ritual and the longest reach. A sister ties a thread around her brother's wrist. He gives her a gift and a promise. That is the whole of it, and yet the thread travels further than almost any other object in Hindu life: in envelopes across continents, in the pockets of soldiers, on the wrists of neighbours and friends who are brothers only by choice.
The festival falls on the full moon of the month of Shravana, usually in August, in the middle of the monsoon. The name is two Sanskrit words. Raksha is protection; bandhan is a tie or bond. The thread, the rakhi, is a bond of protection, and the question of who is protecting whom turns out to be more interesting than it first appears.
What the thread means
The rakhi descends from the raksha sutra, the protective thread a priest ties on the wrist of a worshipper at the end of a puja. It is tied with a mantra and carries the blessing of the rite home. In a sister's hands the thread carries her prayer for her brother's long life and wellbeing. His promise to protect her is the reply, not the beginning. In the oldest stories, it is the one who ties the thread who is doing the protecting.
The ornament does not matter; a rakhi can be a strand of red and yellow cotton or something elaborate with sequins and a tiny silver Ganesha. What matters is that it is tied by hand, with intention.
The stories
Several stories explain the festival, and families tend to favour the one that suits them.
Indrani and Indra
The Bhavishya Purana tells of a war between the gods and the asuras in which Indra, king of the gods, was losing. His wife Indrani, also called Shachi, consecrated a thread with prayers and tied it on his wrist on the full moon of Shravana. He returned to battle and won. The verse priests recite while tying a raksha sutra recalls a different binding, that of the demon king Bali, held fast by his own promise to Vishnu:
Yena baddho Bali raja danavendro mahabalah,
tena tvam abhibadhnami rakshe ma chala ma chala.
With that by which Bali, the mighty king of the demons, was bound,
I bind you. O protection, do not waver, do not waver.
Here the one who ties the thread is a wife, not a sister.
Draupadi and Krishna
The story every Hindu child knows comes from popular tellings of the Mahabharata. When Krishna cut his finger, Draupadi tore a strip from the end of her sari and bound the wound without a second thought. Krishna told her he would repay the debt of that strip of cloth. Years later, when Dushasana tried to strip her in the Kaurava court, it was Krishna who made her sari endless. A torn hem answered with an unending one is the clearest image of what the rakhi asks and offers.
Yama and Yamuna
Yamuna, the river goddess, tied a thread on her brother Yama, the lord of death, and he was so moved that he promised to visit her every year and declared that any brother who received a rakhi and vowed to protect his sister would gain long life. This story is also told for Bhai Dooj after Diwali, and the two festivals are siblings themselves, one in the monsoon and one in autumn.
Rani Karnavati and Humayun
Popular history adds a tale from the sixteenth century. Karnavati, the widowed queen of Mewar, is said to have sent a rakhi to the Mughal emperor Humayun when Chittor was threatened by the Sultan of Gujarat, asking him to come as a brother. Humayun set out, the story goes, but arrived too late; the fort had fallen and the queen had died. Historians treat the episode with caution, but it is retold every year as proof that the thread can cross the lines of religion and empire.
The ritual, step by step
On the morning of the full moon the sister prepares a thali, a plate, with the rakhi, a small bowl of roli or kumkum (red powder), a few grains of rice, a lit lamp and sweets. The brother sits facing her, usually facing east.
- She applies a tilak of roli on his forehead and presses a few grains of rice onto it, a wish for prosperity.
- She performs a brief aarti, circling the lamp before his face.
- She ties the rakhi on his right wrist, with a prayer, or with the verse above if a priest is present.
- She feeds him a sweet, and he feeds her one in return.
- He gives her a gift, traditionally money, clothes or jewellery, and makes his vow to stand by her.
- The younger touches the feet of the elder, and both touch the feet of their parents.
If the brother is away, the rakhi is tied to a photograph or to a coconut that stands in for him, and the real thread goes in the post.
The other names of Shravana Purnima
The full moon of Shravana carries several observances, and in different regions the rakhi is only one of them.
- Narali Purnima, the coconut full moon, is kept by the fishing communities of coastal Maharashtra and Goa. Coconuts are offered to the sea, honoured as the god Varuna, to ask for calm water, and the boats go out again after the monsoon break.
- Upakarma, called Avani Avittam in Tamil Nadu, is the day on which those who wear the yajnopavita, the sacred thread, replace it with a new one and ceremonially resume the study of the Veda. It is a renewal of a different thread, worn across the body rather than on the wrist.
- Jhulan Purnima closes the swing festival of Radha and Krishna in Vrindavan, Bengal and Odisha, where the deities are placed on decorated swings through the last days of Shravana.
- In Bengal the day is Rakhi Purnima, and it carries a memory of 1905, when Rabindranath Tagore asked Hindus and Muslims to tie rakhis on one another in protest against the partition of the province.
Beyond brothers and sisters
The thread was never confined to siblings. Cousins tie it. Women tie it on friends who have become brothers over years of shared life. Priests tie it on the wrists of their patrons; neighbours tie it across religious lines. Schoolchildren send rakhis to soldiers at the border. Environmental movements have had women tie rakhis on trees, extending the circle of protection to the forest. A rakhi tied by a brother on a sister, or by a sister on a sister, is now common and entirely within the spirit of the day.
What all these have in common is a declared relationship. The thread says: I count you as family, and I ask you to count me so. In a society where relationships were once fixed by birth, that declaration is a small act of freedom.
For families spread across the world
Raksha Bandhan is probably the festival most reshaped by distance. Indian post offices sell special envelopes in the weeks before; rakhis are bought in July so that they will arrive in August. Families fix a time that works across three time zones so that the tying can happen over a video call, the sister holding her thread up to the camera while the brother ties the one that arrived last week. The vow is spoken into a phone.
None of this is lesser. The festival has always been about a bond that holds when people are apart. The thread was sent to Humayun across half of India; it can be sent to Melbourne.
Celebrating at home
Make or buy a rakhi a few weeks ahead if it has to travel. On the day, set up the thali with whatever you have: a lamp, a little kumkum, rice, a sweet. Keep the sequence of tilak, aarti, thread, sweet and gift; it takes five minutes and children remember it for life. If there is no brother, tie the thread on a friend, a cousin, a parent, or a Krishna murti; if there is no sister, ask one. Wear the thread until it frays. When it finally comes off, do not throw it in the bin; put it in running water or under a tree, as one would any object that has carried a blessing.