Nishan Kafle

Every now and then, the small Himalayan country of Nepal gains international attention with news of the yearly Everest expedition calamities, the Kumari and the quinquennial Gadhimai festival. Media reporting is only slowly shifting to a highly pressing gender issue: Chhaupadi, a practice that ostracises women during their menstrual cycle.

Women are deemed “impure” during their menstruation, consequentially banished to small huts and barred from participating in daily family activities such as cooking. Chhaupadi permeates nearly every socio-economic group of Nepal, with differences arising only in the extent of the implementation.

Purists adhere to the strictest enactment of the tradition while more liberal fractions of society, often city dwellers, preferring not to shun the tradition through and through, often have their own “Chhaupadi Lite” version: barring women from performing certain activities, such as going to work but not excommunicating them altogether. No matter the number of restrictions imposed on women during their menstruation, any degree of this practice is reprehensible, severely limits women’s participation in society and poses a threat to their health.

Period shaming is not limited to Nepal, it has pervaded other societies in the Global South as well. What differentiates Nepal, however, is its intransigence to budge from this unjust tradition - even in the face of harrowing news of women dying from suffocation, snake bites, and pneumonia, during their time in menstruation huts.  

In 2017, the death of three women who were secluding in mud sheds, prompted the government to criminalise the practice. But in the absence of a proper mechanism to monitor compliance and the law itself not mandating enforcement, Chhaupadi continues to exist unabated. While the Government of Nepal had outlawed Chhaupadi in 2005 succumbing to pressure from civil society, the feeble enforcement of legislation has not borne fruit in the real world.

Part of the reason why it is so difficult to tackle this issue is because Chhaupadi is a collective, societal problem, not an individual one. Even if certain families are open to forfeiting this tradition, they are subject to societal pressure against doing so as it is believed that menstruating women bring bad fortune to the community. The illness of cattle or a bad harvest is often blamed on a woman’s refusal or unwillingness to segregate during her period, consequentially also bringing shame upon a family according to local traditions. 

The belief that carrying out daily chores during menstruation exposes the family to the anger of Hindu Deities in the form of ill health and misfortune is taught to girls at a young age, making many women go into self-isolation willingly to protect their loved ones.

There is an economic case against Chhaupadi as well. The practice is more pronounced in rural Nepal, where many women take bulk of household work as their husbands are employed abroad in the Gulf. In the absence of their mothers during isolation, children are often left with no choice but to take their place in doing backbreaking chores, ultimately hindering their education and perpetuating the vicious cycle of poverty.

In many places, women are also expected to practice at least 10 days of seclusion after giving birth.. Menstruation is not an anomalous situation in which women are discriminated against. As with the rest of the world, bias against women is deeply engrained in Nepalese society.

Considerable efforts have been carried out from the national level to address Chhaupadi. Some local governments cut food rations to families that deny girls from attending school during their cycle and essential government services are inaccessible to those practicing Chhaupadi. It is common to see the destruction of isolation huts, but simply destroying the physical structure itself, will not solve the problem at its root. Huts can always be built back again; it is essential to tackle the myths and superstition that drive this tradition.

For legislation to translate into results, there needs to be a robust grassroots movement that focuses on awareness raising. In dealing with deep-rooted practices, people should be motivated to give up what they are practicing through consciousness and understanding, and not through denial of access to food or government services. Emphasis should also be given to primary education: we need to teach all children—not just girls—about reproductive biology and women’s rights to ensure that this knowledge is also carried further from generation to generation.

Nepal has undergone massive political transformation in the last decade, graduating from an age-old monarchy to a secular, pluralist democracy—a system that promised to bring equality to all. Many lives were lost in the decade long civil war against the oppressive monarchy that subdued minority rights, and the present condition of women’s rights does not honour these sacrifices.

Nepal is hailed by the liberal international community for passing LGBTQIA+ and abortion-supportive legislation, but it falls short in enforcing these laws on the ground. Chhaupadi has no place in today’s democratic Nepal where equal rights should be a default, not a lofty aspiration.  

The photograph in this article is courtesy of © The Nude Abstract. You can follow them on Instagram at @thenudeabstract.