Jallikattu Tradition and festival Tamil Nadu in south india

by admin · January 27, 2017

India is the country where the traditions are an integral part of daily life. These traditions have been existing from ancient times and have been followed by people very faithfully. Some festivals are religious in nature whereas some have a pastoral agrarian reference. People have been celebrating and participating at these festivities sometimes knowing their significance and nature of the event and sometimes obliviously they follow it not knowing the real importance of the festival. From east to west and north to south, Indians always respect their cultural routes and staunchly follow the traditions. In south of India, in the state of Tamil Nadu people celebrate the festival of Jallikattu in the month of January. This has been celebrated for 100 of years, the festival has religious and pastoral connotation attached to it.

There is a tradition of keeping elephants , cows and bulls in the hindu temples. These animals participate along with the people when there is a festival in the temple. Whenever some religious processions of deities take place these animals form an important part of the procession. One thing which must be noted here that bull is the associate vehicle of Lord Shiva and in each temple of Shiva throughout India a bull is present in the temple and worshipped. There is a controversy going on in India about the Jallikattu festival where the bulls are left in the open crowd and the group of men try to control them. It must not be seen or understood as a bull fight or bull chase game. The idea behind the controlling the bull is to find a bull which is strong and vigorous. This is a form of testing the strength of the bull thereby ascertaining it’s heredity. The bulls which can be controlled by men are spared and those which cannot be controlled or which have been controlled by vehement efforts are kept for the breeding purpose.

India being an agriculture based country where the bulls and cows are the backbone of agriculture sector. Strong bulls are still used in major parts of India for ploughing the fields. The festival of Jallikattu prepares the platform for the people to find out the right cattle for their agriculture purpose. There is a group of people not knowing the actual relevance of the Jallikattu festival are opposing the participation on the bulls and at the same time it is felt that these are the people who are very far from their traditional roots and they do not know the real significance and approach towards this festival. India is the country where trees, animals, mountains , birds all have found a respectable place in the Hindu culture. When a bull is worshipped in the temple how the people can be so insensitive to hurt the animal and they do not. Sometimes at the spur of moment , something might be done wrong by some mischievous people but in is in any way not to harm the animals. Jallikattu is not a cruel spectacle like the bull fighting in Spain where a bull is pierced and hurt. Jallikattu in Tamil Nadu has been going on because people respect their tradition and they love the bulls.