Chilkur Balaji temple exhorts boys to accept one girl as sister this Raksha Bandhan

Hyderabad: The Chilkur Balaji temple has come up with an innovative campaign for this year Raksha Bandhan. In an attempt to reduce negativity and atrocities on women and girls, the temple authorities have decided to request boys who come to the temple to tie rakhi and accept a girl as a sister for life.

The chief priest of the temple CS Rangarajan said, “Raksha Bandhan and Bhai Dooj are two major festivals devoted to this sacred relationship. In Raksha Bandhan, the brother vows for the safety of his sister and sister prays for the long life of the brother. The Raksha Bandhan rakhi or the red thread 'moli' works as a reminder and is removed on the date of Janmashtami falling after Raksha Bandhan. When Bahadur Shah of Gujarat attacked Chittor, Rani Karnavati sent a Rakhi to Emperor Humayun, calling him a brother and requested for his help. Humayun did come to his Rakhi sister's help.

In the ritual of Bhai Dooj, the sister anoints her brother's forehead with vermilion and performs aarti. This festival is similar to that of Raksha Bandhan. Only the ritual of tying Rakhi has been replaced with tikka (vermilion spot on forehead), he further adds. Earlier, TRS MP Kalvakuntla Kavitha appealed to the women of Telangana to gift their brothers a helmet instead of tying a rakhi for the occasion. Launching a social media campaign called Sister4Change, Kavitha asked the women of the state to contribute to the safety of young motorists.

It is the need of the hour to safeguard our brothers and rewrite the tradition by gifting them a helmet this Rakhi, as the numbers of deaths in two-wheeler accidents is much higher than in terrorist attacks.” Kavitha also tweeted that while the campaign had been launched on social media, it would be stepped up to include awareness-building events on the ground in the state too.

All three festivals Jagannath Yatra, Raksha Bandhan and Bhai Dooj are observed in the last six months of a year in the period of dakshinayana, which is the period with darker or the negative side of the mind. In Chaturmas the mind is more negative, violent, irritable and with more non fulfillment of desires. All festivals which relates to purity of relationship are thus observed in this period.

A synonym of Purushottam is Jagannath and his abode. Puri is known as Purushottam Kshetra, which is one of the four most sacred places in India for the Hindus. The famous festival related to the Jagannath temple is the Ratha Yatra, or chariot festival, which occurs yearly in June or July. During this festival, the three deities are taken from the temple and placed in large chariots which are then drawn along Grand Road to the Gundecha temple, a few kilometers away. After that they stayed in that temple for seven days.

BY Vandana Sharma