HIPPIES CULTURE IN INDIA

Introduction
Hippie culture defines:
Usually, young person who rejects the mores of established society and advocates a
nonviolent ethic.
Typically characterized by unconventional dress and behaviour, communal or transient
lifestyles, oppositions to war and liberal attitudes toward sexuality and the use of marijuana
and psychedelic drugs.
It’s not rare to see a group of people just ‘chilling’ out. With a joint in one hand and ‘sutta’ in
another, these people dress up like they care least about the world- haywire hairstyle and a
very unorganized dressing style.

Such people in popular culture today are generally called ‘hippies’. Hippies who are uncaring
and plain waste to the society but in reality, they are part of a tradition that was started way
back in 1960’s and it is the hippies who have kept it alive and going in India.

In mid-1960’s hipsters living in New York were ‘honoured’ with the term Hippie by Herb.

They lived in their own communities, listened to psychedelic music and explored various
altered states of consciousness by consuming LSD, cannabis and psilocybin mushrooms
because marijuana wasn’t there yet!

Hippies eventually became just travellers who renounced the world, roamed around until they
found their peace.

Hippie Culture in India

In India concept of ‘sanyas’ is the true ideology behind hippie movement. It also noted that
the spiritual teachings of St. Francis of Assisi and Mahatma Gandhi also influenced the early
hippies.

Although the Hippie movement started in the United States it soon engulfed the entire world
into the life of insaneness and uncertainty because what could be better than living a life you
yourself did not know the end to.

By late 1970 pretty much every hippie in the world realized that the ultimate destination to
their hippie-ness is finding peace in India. Undertaking a land journey that went via Baghdad,
Tehran, Kabul, Peshawar they crossed into India. Banaras and Goa emerged as two favourite
spots for these hippies.
The idea that Indians lived beyond the American mainstream attracted more and more hippies
during that time so much so that a large number of them decided to stay back. Goa till today
has a hippie market and serves as a hotspot for hippies coming to India.

Hippies of India
India had already witnessed a new culture on the rise and became a safe haven for several
hippies.

Kasol, Kodaikanal, Almora, Varkala, Manali, Rishikesh and Gokarna have emerged as tourist
destinations for hippies. Good quality stuff at cheap rates- who wouldn’t want to go?

Some may call them outcasts and some lost but hippies are protectors of a culture that once
took the world by storm.

While it’s not wrong to associate these things with hippies, this is not what all there is to the
hippie subculture. The hippie subculture was a widespread youth movement that had a
massive universal reach.

Much like its development in the United States of America, it formed linkages with India as
well.