Figure 1.--Children both boys and girls can wear a bindi or tilaka/tilak to school. It is an Hindu mark of devotion. Some Hundus wear tilaka on a daily basis. Others only wear them for special religious occasions, depending on different customs. I am not sure just how common they are at school. Here we see a a boy in Andra Pradesh wearing his school uniform with a tilaka. He is wearing it between his eyebrows rather than on his forehead. I'm not sure what that signafies.

Children both boys and girls can wear a bindi or tilaka/tilak to school. It is an Hindu mark of devotion. Some Hundus wear tilaka on a daily basis. Others only wear them for special religious occasions, depending on different customs. I am not sure just how common they are at school. We do see quite a number of school children wearing them. We note them in many school photographs. We have another example in a Ganeshpuri school near Mumbai. Often we only see a few boys wrearing them. It seems to be more common for girls. Certainly it is more common when the boys are engaged in some religious activity, Tilaka means red, but they are not all red. It can be drawn with clay, ashes (vihuti), or sandalwood. It is usually done on the center of the forehead (Ajna chakra), but can be worn on other parts of the body. There are many different designs for tilaka. The most common is a red dot, but there are many others. The variations indicate the particular god that is being honored. There are non-religious usages as well. Women may wear a tilaka as a beauty mark by women of all faiths in India with no religious conotations. This is primarily a Indian custom as India is the primary country with a Hindu majority population. There are, however, other countries with large Hindu populations. We also notice Sei Lankan school children with tilaka. There is also an example at a Sri Lanka school.

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Created: 8:06 PM 12/12/2007
Last updated: 8:07 PM 12/12/2007