What is 'Kanyadan' and how aggressive campaigns by 'neo-liberal-pseudo-feminazis' have distorted the tradition and meaning

First of all, I am not intending to offend someone or their choice of not performing ‘Kanyadaan’ in their marriage ceremony. I totally understand that it is a personal choice and I equally wish them a better happy future ahead. I am writing up this article to explain the young minds about what ‘Kanyadan’ actually is and not to tell them what they should be doing. If after reading this article, anyone thinks that ‘Kanyadaan’ should be avoided, they are still free to do so. I just want people to know about ‘Kanyadan’ before they begin to argue against it.

The word ‘Kanyadaan’ as of now has become a sore letter in the young minds, obviously due to the aggressive campaigns by ‘neo-liberal-pseudo-feminazis’. Not interested to discuss on the goals and bigger religious-cultural downfall they tend to achieve, but I shall like to define what exactly Kanyadan means in accordance to the ancient religious texts and beliefs.

I shall like to begin with a more simpler term, Chokkhu’daan’. Before every Durga Puja, we come to hear about the Purohit performing Chokkhu’daan’ to instil Maa Durga in the Idol, which is how the ‘Pran Pratishtha’ is done. Without the Chokkhudaan, neither Maa shall come to life in the murti (‘come to life’ in terms of religious belief) and nor the Puja could be performed.

Now what exactly does Chokkhudaan mean? Does the Purohit just open up his own eyes and stick them to the murti of Maa Durga to perform ‘Chokkhudaan’? This is what happens when we begin taking words from the religious texts, translate them without any knowledge about the subject and start taking them literally with no information about the context.

The ‘Daan’ word in Sanskrit does not literally mean to ‘give away’. You don’t give away eyes to Maa Durga. Eyes are not given away to the Murti of Maa Durga. She already has her own eyes to look after the human world. It is performed in order to do ‘Pran-Pratishtha’ of her in the idol that we made.

Similarly, a girl is not an object to be given away and no one is giving her away. Kanyadaan is performed in order to change the Gotra of the girl. The father does not ‘give away’ his girl to the Husband, just as the Purohit does not ‘give away’ his eyes to the Durga Murti. The change in Gotra is done, as it performs as a biological tag. In Hinduism, as we all know, we don’t marry to people of the same gotra. Marrying in the same Gotra means inbreeding, as you have same forefathers somewhere down the line, and this linkage is traced by the Gotra. And it is scientifically proven that inbreeding causes many biological deformity in the child. Since the girl is getting married to a person of some other Gotra, her Gotra is transformed during the marriage ceremony which ultimately maintains the biological linkage, as the gotra of the parents would be carried forward by the child of the both.

Link here

So lets not just jump into conclusions and understand the basics of Hinduism, before demonising them blindly just in order to follow the wave of more-modern-opinions.

The author of this piece, Subhashish Choudhury is a member of Hindu Chatra Sangstha and the views expressed in the article are his personal.