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Ricebox Studio: In your opinion, do you think that menstrual exclusion is mostly rooted in culture and religion?

Dr Lidia Wojtczak: Hinduism can be seen as both a religion and a way of life and many of the ‘religious’ rules actually come from books of law – Dharmaśāstras. I’m using the term “Sanskrit Text” as shorthand for texts written in Sanskrit which belong to the normative or orthodox traditions. If we read these texts from the point of view of exclusion, we can see that there are at least three main ways in which women are “put in their place.”

The first factor is the impurity of a menstruating woman. Through her impurity, she is able to put all the man’s and the village’s hard work at risk and completely ruin that whole situation for everyone. She is seen as impure and she knows she’s impure. That’s very important. She knows it’s her responsibility to not pollute. That’s her duty as an impure menstruating woman.

In the case of menstrual exclusion in Nepal, impurity is what takes the forefront. In some extreme cases, women can be excluded to these so-called cow sheds and this can lead to very tragic circumstances where women might get very ill or sometimes even die from things like snakebites or smoke or the cold or all these things.

RS: You’ve done research on menstrual exclusion in Nepal in particular – do you know, or have you observed any positive cultural experiences of menstruation in Nepal?

LW: Menstrual exclusion is a very complicated social phenomenon so there are bound to be different perspectives on it. It can be seen as something positive by the women experiencing it. Because of the restrictions they are under, perhaps they don’t have to cook for two days, or do any of the cleaning or touching anything at home. This may be the attitude if they have a safer space to be isolated in, safer than a shed in the forest, like a special apartment in their house. Periods are often referred to as ‘a woman’s holiday’ in some places in India. So, while the foundations of the practice are inherently oppressive, women experience it in different ways and, for the most part, they’ll try to make the best of it when they can. Another important note is that not all women are forced or choose to isolate when menstruating. Many modern South Asian women are going about their daily lives normally when they menstruate.

RS: How would you say menstruation is written about within Sanskrit or within Hinduism?

LW: It’s a big topic. Very generally, you could say it has its foundations in the Vedic texts and these are around 4,000 years old. There’s one specific story where one of the greatest Gods, Indra, kills a brahmin, a rival sacrificer, and becomes impure. Therefore he can’t do any sacrifices himself and decides to get rid of his impurity by dividing it into thirds. He gives a third to some trees, a third to the earth and he leaves a third to the women. The women say ‘sure, we will take on this one-third of your impurity and in return, we want to be able to have children’. And he said, ‘fine you’ll take the sin and be able to have children whenever you want but the burden you will have from now on is that you will menstruate every month’. Every time this myth gets retold in the texts over the centuries a little bit more is added.

Menstruation gets written about a lot within Hinduism medical literature for the purpose of just describing what it is, ‘Why does it happen? Where does it come from?’ It’s very clear these medical texts, written by men, didn’t know exactly how a woman’s body works. Tantric texts are texts which were written to be subversive and as a sort of a counterculture. Another thing that tantric practitioners may appreciate is menstruation as a sign of the ‘shakti’ or the power of a female goddess. But it’s not necessarily true for every branch.

There is a temple called Kamakhya in Assam, where it’s thought that that is where the goddess’ vulva resides, and so that’s where she menstruates. Practitioners might go and worship the menstruation of the goddess, but then at home, they may still practice menstrual exclusion for social reasons because the women of the family may still be seen as impure when they menstruate. However, if you are interested in finding textual references to more positive outlooks on menstruation, I would say the Tantric texts are where you might find them.

RS: Within Hinduism, are there any activities that women are exempt or forbidden from during menstruation?

LW: Within the texts and the prescriptions of broadly understood Hinduism, the most important thing is that a woman just cannot be around a man. She cannot look at him. She cannot be looked at by him. She cannot touch anything that is generally used in the house. She cannot cook. But there are all sorts of ancient prohibitions, which don’t make much sense anymore, but which people may still follow. In Nepal, a woman may decide that she can’t touch a jar of pickles when she’s menstruating, because they will go off rather than pickle. The normative Sanskrit texts tell women they can’t cut their nails or hairs. They shouldn’t be doing their makeup. They shouldn’t be making ropes, for some reason. That’s a very ancient prohibition that must have originally had some relevance. You can’t specifically use eyeliner, can’t use body creams, etc. Personal hygiene is just generally not seen as something that should be happening.

RS: Do you find it interesting that menstruation is considered impure but then women are forbidden from personal hygiene?

LW: The point is that this is a very different type of impurity. Beside the basic, physical impurity, there exists a social and ritual impurity and the things you endanger with this second type of impurity are much more consequential. For instance, the chances of someone else reaching liberation or the ritual failing. It’s not impurity in the sense of physical impurity, but just being a danger to society.

RS: Why do you think menstruation is a taboo topic when almost half the population experience it at some point in their life?

LW: I’ll speak only again to Hindu normative texts. It’s very clear from a Hindu perspective that the texts were masculine, male-oriented, very patriarchal. If you think about the caste system (there are four castes in the system) that’s always related to men. Women are very often classed together with the lowest of castes. Of course we can’t actually verify how all of these prescriptions and prohibitions affected women throughout history, but as far as we can tell from the texts that were being produced, this was a male-centred culture that was writing male-centred texts and creating male-centred prescriptions and propositions.

RS: What would you say to those that shame their daughters or women, about periods in the name of religion? Or are there any religious texts that speak against it?

LW: For the most part, menstrual shaming and menstrual exclusion happens for more complicated reasons than we can understand looking from the outside. While I’m very compassionate and very empathetic towards anyone who’s going through something like menstrual shaming, I wouldn’t want to create even more difficult situations for women, for instance, by turning them against their families. That just seems to be counterproductive. I think that every case will need to be treated separately and with a very deep knowledge of the cultural, religious, and social context that’s taking place and which is leading to this exclusion and shaming. To answer the second part, no. I have yet to come across a text which would speak against menstrual exclusion (period shaming does not seem to be a concern, perhaps because men do not have much of a role to play in it?). I would imagine that in those texts which venerate menstruation, we’ll find an ultra transgressive, ultra-feminine female power goddess narrative. I doubt they would have anything to say about the real-life experiences of women who go through menstrual exclusion or shaming.

RS: Does the hymen hold any significance within Hinduism?

LW: I don’t know. Good question. The hymen more in the sense of virginity, for instance? I don’t think it’s written about at all as a piece of female anatomy, like ‘the hymen exists’. I don’t even think I’ve seen that come up.

RS: Do you know why it isn’t mentioned? Maybe they didn’t know about it?

LW: Exactly. That’s the thing, to know what a hymen is, you’d have to observe the female body with pretty strong interest. At least Indian texts that I’ve read, it’s not that they are not mentioned because they are too taboo to mention, it’s just that they weren’t of any interest to the people writing the texts. It feels like two sides of the same coin – since the authors don’t seem to know much about menstruation, they’ve not studied it themselves – as something ‘unknown’ and ‘mysterious’, it’s easy to be afraid of. That’s the sort of feeling you get in these Sanskrit normative texts – menstruation is such a mysterious thing, it’s completely unknown and unstudied and dangerous and, importantly, men don’t have it. There is a feeling even in the oldest myth about the god Indra, that there must be something inherently wrong with women or something magical or weird.

You can also sometimes get the impression when reading these normative Sanskrit texts that women menstruating [are] very powerful. They are a danger and should be locked away because they have this destructive power. It must be a huge power because sometimes there seems to be this undercurrent that all of these mechanisms – women’s natural ‘wicked nature’, women’s dharma and the impurity of menstruation are all tools in a complicated system of controlling this power.

RS: Do you think there is a responsibility to teach children about menstruation within Hinduism or Sanskrit?

LW: I think there is a responsibility to teach children everywhere, about menstruation. In an ideal world, boys and girls are taught about menstruation. I think that one of the biggest things that’s still missing from the discussion in the West, for instance, is the fact that despite a more advanced sexual education in schools, boys still don’t always realise how menstruation and the menstrual cycle work. It would be brilliant if that could change everywhere, within whatever context.