Why Tying a Rakhi to Your Husband Was Once a Common Practice

Riya Kumari | Jul 24, 2025, 21:25 IST

( Image credit : Freepik )

Highlight of the story: So, rewind to a time when royal drama wasn’t served on Netflix but in actual blood-soaked battlefields. Women, often queens or noblewomen, would tie rakhi to powerful kings to make them honorary brothers, thereby emotionally manipulating them into going full Avengers mode on their enemies. Rakhi wasn’t just about siblinghood. It was about protection and commitment.

Today, Raksha Bandhan is simple: a sister ties a rakhi on her brother’s wrist, he vows to protect her, she feeds him something sweet, and they both check their phones. It’s ritual. It’s sweet. It’s cultural shorthand. But scratch the surface, and you’ll find a version of Raksha Bandhan that’s almost forgotten: the one where women tied rakhi to their husbands. Yes, their husbands, not brothers. Not distant cousins. Their own spouses. To our modern ears, it may sound strange. Why would a wife call her husband “protector” in a way that symbolically overlaps with brotherhood? Isn’t that mixing metaphors or worse, boundaries? But history rarely follows our rules. And this tradition wasn’t born out of confusion. It was born out of survival, out of trust, and, surprisingly, out of power.

1. Where Did This Practice Come From?

The earliest records of rakhi-like practices go back over a thousand years. But the tradition of women tying rakhis to men they weren't biologically related to, sometimes kings, sometimes their own husbands, emerged from very specific social and political needs. One of the most cited examples comes from Rani Karnavati of Mewar, who famously sent a rakhi to Humayun, the Mughal emperor, asking him to protect her kingdom against Bahadur Shah. Despite their religious and political differences, Humayun treated the rakhi as sacred and rushed to help, though history tells us he arrived too late.
This wasn’t about family. This was about sacred duty. The rakhi wasn’t a genetic contract. It was a moral one. In that same context, wives began tying rakhis to their husbands, not because they saw them as brothers, but because the rakhi represented something deeper than kinship. It represented protection, loyalty, dharma. In ancient texts and regional customs, especially among Rajputs, certain Maratha communities, and parts of Gujarat and Rajasthan, women tied rakhis to their husbands as a symbolic prayer: protect me, not just with strength, but with integrity.

2. Why Would a Wife Tie a Rakhi to Her Husband?

It’s important to understand: ancient marriages were not built on romance. They were built on responsibility. A wife, often married young, needed assurance, not just of love, but of safety, of commitment, of alignment. The rakhi, in this context, became a subtle but powerful gesture. It said: “I choose to honour you. I trust you to honour me in return, not just as husband, but as protector of my dignity, my body, my life.”
It reminded both parties that marriage was not possession. It was duty, wrapped in sacred intention. This wasn’t about turning a husband into a brother. It was about reminding him of his higher role, beyond desire, beyond control: the role of guardian, in every sense of the word.

3. Where Was This Practiced? And By Whom?

This practice was never widespread across all of India, but it did have cultural strongholds. Among:
Rajputana royalty and nobility, where marriages were deeply political, and the lines between alliances, protection, and intimacy often blurred.Certain tribal and agrarian communities in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, and Rajasthan, where the rakhi was seen as a general symbol of protective bonding, not strictly siblinghood.Folklore traditions in Gujarat and parts of Maharashtra, where tying a rakhi to a deity, a husband, or even a sacred tree was part of spiritual practice. In all these cases, the rakhi symbolised trust, not family structure. And for wives in particular, it became a form of quiet but powerful social insurance, a public gesture asking their husbands to remember their vow of raksha.

4. So Why Did the Practice Fade Away?

Several reasons:

a) Colonial Influence & Legal Reframing

As British rule introduced codified legal structures and European norms around marriage and family, many indigenous rituals were dismissed, simplified, or quietly erased. Practices that didn’t “fit” the Western template of family were seen as backward or confusing.

b) Rise of Emotional Romanticism

With modernity came a shift in how love was portrayed. Marriage became less about alliance and duty, and more about romantic chemistry. Tying a rakhi, deeply associated with sibling love, onto a spouse began to feel out of step with new ideals of “exclusive romantic love.”

c) Misunderstanding the Symbolism

As urban societies became more literal and less symbolically literate, many stopped understanding what the rakhi represented and started focusing only on its surface meaning. To them, rakhi = brother. So tying it to a husband = awkward. But in losing the layers, we lost the power of the ritual.

d) Patriarchal Redefinitions

Ironically, while this ritual once empowered women, giving them a public space to seek loyalty, it was later reinterpreted as “confusing,” and gradually phased out.

What Does It Mean for Us Today?

We live in a world full of symbols that have lost their soul. Rituals remain, but the intention behind them often fades. And yet, the question this forgotten practice raises is timeless: In our most intimate relationships, do we feel protected, not just loved?
Does your partner stand by you when you are not strong?
Does your relationship honour your dignity when you are vulnerable?
Does it offer you security that is emotional, spiritual, social, not just physical?
Because Raksha Bandhan isn’t about who ties the thread. It’s about what that thread represents.