When it comes to women’s issues, woke media routinely blames Hindu Dharma for all the problems afflicting women. Be it patriarchy, misogyny, sexism, or domestic violence, Hindu Dharma becomes the easy scapegoat for everyone. Hindu culture and civilization are often portrayed as the source of all issues faced by women in Bharatiya society. It’s a clever tactic to deviate people’s attention from the real issue and prevent any serious engagement with women’s issues from a neutral and no-nonsensical lens. It also works to conveniently cover up the inherent anti-women historical trajectory of the Judaeo-Christian religious framework. One just needs to go through the Old Testament to get a peep into the misogynistic universe perpetuated by the Judaeo-Christian framework that no woke media talks about.
Menstrual taboos are one such issue that has been exaggeratedly linked to Hindu Dharma. This forceful correlation established between the existence of menstrual taboos in Bharatiya society and the tenets of Hindu Dharma makes no sense and evades logic. Yet, a lot of such casual Hinduphobic rhetoric pervades woke media. You routinely get to see such articles where Hindu Dharma is said to consider menstruating women impure and dirty. Many of these articles further spice up the scenario by putting forth unsubstantiated stuff that might be fiction for all we know.
“Menstruating women cooking food for husbands will be reborn as dogs, says godman”, this sensational title belongs to a story published by The Hindu in February 2020. The article maligns the entire Hindu Dharma based on the quote of a religious leader from Gujarat who apparently said that menstruating women who cook food for their husbands will be reborn as dogs in their next life, while men consuming food prepared by women having their periods will be reborn as bullocks. Many “religious leaders” of Abrahamic religions like Christianity and Islam say all sorts of preposterous things about women. But the woke media never reports any of this stuff. But they nitpick stuff being said about a Hindu religious leader somewhere in the country by probably taking his statements out of context and coming up with an article to malign Hindu Dharma and prejudice people against Hindu culture.
An article published recently by CBC News Canada also perpetuates the stereotype of Hindu Dharma propagating menstrual taboos. It’s a first-person narrative written by a Canadian Hindu. “Periods are considered unclean in my community. Now I make a point to talk about them”, the title of the article itself is enough to prejudice the reader against the community to which the person talked about belongs. The article emphasizes that “Leisha Toory wasn’t allowed to go to the temple in her Hindu community while on her period because menstruating girls were considered unclean”.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/first-person-period-positivity-1.7096370
The first-person narrative begins on a rather dramatic note with the narrator talking about her experiences in a Hindu household when she was 11 years old. She narrates how her grandmother told her she couldn’t enter her family temple in Mauritius “when girls were unclean”. Then, she talks about how girls in general were excluded from visiting the temple in her community when they were menstruating. Then, she narrates an incident during Navaratri celebrations at her home when a Hindu priest was called out by her father for apparently saying several times during the prayers that women are dirty because they menstruate.
Now, I am not trying to contest the facts of the story as presented by the first-person narrator. What concerns me and should concern all Hindus is the intent of the story – the deliberate exaggeration of an individual experience to enforce subtle but powerful stereotypes about Hindu Dharma at large and present the entire Hindu community as some kind of fanatics who view menstruating women as dirty. If a Hindu priest makes derogatory comments about menstruating women, that’s his individual opinion and speaks of his individual disposition. One can’t generalize a random incident to whip up prejudices against an entire community. But the article does precisely that. It focuses disproportionately on the first-person narrator’s supposed experience of being considered impure in her community while she was menstruating. The article title and the blurb put the spotlight on periods being supposedly considered unclean in the girl’s community. This is enough to set the tone of the narrative and prejudice the reader at the outset.
Interestingly enough, a large chunk of the story further down has little to do with menstrual taboos in Hindu society. The first-person narrator then talks about issues concerning menstruating women globally like the issue of period leaves. Then she talks about coming across numerous TikTok videos about periods. These videos, says the narrator, highlight the stories around menstruation and the stigma attached to it. Then, she talks about her foundation that she launched to “advance period equity and improve access to period products in Canada in 2022”.
Many concerns that the story raises about menstrual taboos and women’s need to speak up on these issues are actually legit, but only if these were not forcefully connected to Hindu Dharma. Period taboos exist in all countries and societies. There is nothing about Hindu Dharma that makes it more prone to menstrual taboos. Conversations around periods are a bit awkward even in western countries. I can say this from first-hand experience. When I studied in the UK, we all had hush-hush conversations around periods. It would still feel awkward to discuss this subject with guys. It’s a fact that menstrual taboos need to be dealt with. They are a general problem and forcefully connecting them with Hindu Dharma, smacks of a Hinduphobic agenda, nothing else.
Towards the end, the article again plays the classic Hinduphobe by going on and on about the issue of Hindu girls not being able to visit temples during periods. “ I haven’t gone back home since I moved to Canada but I am hoping to in December 2024. Even though I’m comfortable with talking about periods in Canada, I still don’t feel ready to go to a temple in Mauritius while on my period and openly defy the priests. But what I do know is that we’ll at least have a conversation about it as a family”, says the article at the end.
Hindu Dharma is not a codified religion, unlike Abrahamic faiths where there is a rigid set of dos and don’ts. However, it won’t be fair to say that since Hindu Dharma is so fluid, anything goes by. Different sampradays (sects) have their own traditions and there are people who strictly adhere to those traditions. However, there is no universal mandate in Hindu Dharma that prevents menstruating women from visiting temples. Nor do Hindu temples have any such rules except in specific cases such as the Sabrimala Temple regarding which the western media has already done enough anti-Hindu propaganda. Therefore, women visiting or not visiting a temple during menstruation boils down to specifics of different sects, family beliefs, or individual choices. Many Hindu women visit temples while they are on periods, while others don’t. Therefore, creating a conspiracy theory around Hindu Dharma considering menstruation impure and therefore discouraging women from visiting temples is pure hogwash.
Abrahamic religions like Islam and Christianity also have menstruation taboos. In Islam, a woman is considered categorically impure while she is mensurating. Forget menstruation, every time a woman performs Islamic prayers even at home, she has to undergo strict personal purification rituals after that. Certain sects of Orthodox Christianity also regard menstruation problematically.
An article published on the site MenstrualCup Reviews talks about major religions and menstrual taboos. The article gives a detailed description of various restrictions placed on women during menstruation in Judaism. Similarly, in the context of Christianity, the article talks about taboos surrounding menstruation in the 19th century, that became less rigid with time. “Christianity has a few taboos behind menstruation. Way back, Western cultures viewed women who had their periods as dangerous, and she was socially restricted. The British Medical Journal of 1878 even claimed that a woman who was having her period would make beacon putrefy”, says the article. It further argues that women’s natural tendency to menstruate is probably one of the reasons women didn’t have major opportunities to occupy important positions within the Christian religion orthodoxy. The article also says that the Orthodox Church doesn’t allow women to receive communion during menstruation.
With regard to Islam, the article says that Muslims consider periods impure and follow strict regulations that a woman should not be touched until the periods are over. She is prohibited from having sex for a period of 7 days, starting from the first day of her period, and is also prohibited from fasting and praying, according to the article.
Hindu Dharma has no stringent set of universal codes for menstruating women that even remotely resemble these extreme diktats. Yet, woke media doesn’t write about menstrual taboos in Islam, Christianity, and Judaism while unnecessarily sensationalizing random incidents from here and there to malign Hindu Dharma.
On the contrary, in many communities within Hindus, a girl’s menstrual cycle is celebrated. Feasts and celebrations are organized when a girl begins to have her period. It’s a celebration of a woman’s fertility and her power to create another life. These celebrations rather make many Hindu women view their periods positively and decrease the general feelings of guilt and shame associated with periods.
A book called Rtu Vidya: Ancient Science behind Menstrual Practices written by Sinu Joseph delves deep into the various cultural practices associated with periods in different regions of Bharat and explains the scientific and logical reasoning behind the origin of such practices. Thus, the book is a critical eye-opener for those who assume that cultural practices around menstruation in Bharat are a taboo that need to be done away with.
The author reportedly undertook a journey across Bharat to decode the cultural specificities of various menstrual practices and studied a diverse set of indigenous knowledge systems such as Ayurveda, Sad-Darsana, Tantra, Cakra, Agam Sastra, Jyotisa Sastra, etc. The book is a great initiative, and we certainly need more scholarship in the area of specific menstrual cultural practices associated with Hindu Dharma that give a nuanced and accurate perspective into these practices, unlike the woke distortion and misrepresentation of these.
When a woman undergoes menstruation, she naturally feels like resting for a period of 2-3 days. It’s rather nature’s gift of detoxification to a woman. If she shuts herself from the world for a brief period of 2 or 3 days and concentrates solely on her physical well-being, it’s a natural detoxification process that makes her super-efficient and active for the rest of the month. I can vouch for this from experience. If a woman rests during the hardest days of her menstrual cycle, it has a super positive impact on her overall mental and physical health. That is precisely why the world is debating the issue of period leaves.
Even most western countries don’t have the provision of period leave. Only a handful of countries across the world have the provision for menstrual leave. These include countries like Zambia, Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, Spain, Indonesia, Japan, and Vietnam. Ironically enough, those who understand the necessity of menstrual leaves for women view certain Hindu cultural practices associated with menstruation as social taboos. Some of the restrictions might be too harsh or outdated for these times, I agree, but the intent of most of these restrictions is to let women have ample rest during their menstrual cycle.
The issue of women’s lack of access to proper sanitary facilities during menstruation and the lack of awareness regarding the usage of sanitary pads are the main thing that needs to be addressed. These are concrete issues that have their origin in poverty and lack of education and awareness. Hindu Dharma has nothing to do with it. It’s high time woke media gets this point and stops portraying Hindu Dharma as some kind of originator of all menstrual taboos.
