Prashanti Rai
Menstrual Untouchability Still Exists in India?!
One of the rules that women are required to obey without ever questioning in our culture is menstrual untouchability. Even though things have changed a lot since people used to sleep on mats or be banished to spartan huts outside their homes, women still experience significant menstrual untouchability.
The Supreme Court of India lifted the centuries-old restriction on women who are menstruation entering the Sabarimala shrine today. Women between the ages of 10 and 50 were not permitted on the premises of the temple, regardless of whether they were in menstruation. But do entrance restrictions and prejudice just apply to temples? Women have grown up with lists of objects they shouldn’t touch when on periods. And it would be untrue to claim that their confidence and self-belief are unaffected by that. In a sense, it does give them the impression that they are unclean and filthy on certain days of the month.
Even though things have changed a lot, women still experience significant menstrual untouchability.As a result, many girls—some as young as eight or nine—were forced to choose between studying or playing because their elders insisted they assist in the kitchen. Therefore, excluding women from home chores like cooking is unjust to many young girls who are forced to help out around the house to uphold this antiquated custom.
The termination of women’s expulsion from the Sabarimala temple is a significant victory, but if society continues to consider them as outsiders when they are menstruating, this victory will not be complete. It will take time since, despite our modernity, most of us have been unable to let go of the traditions because they are so firmly embedded. But perhaps we might gradually free our ladies from the dread lock now that we have a voice in the matter. The fact that a girl has a uterus that sheds its lining once a month should never lead her to feel unclean, polluted, inferior, or estranged.