In accordance to the stickers slapped on buses I was in sundar sudur pachhim, beautiful far west, when 2011 rolled around. From the thick fog in the Tarai to the gently rolling hills and the snow-peaked mountains, I wondered why so few tourists had traversed this terrain. Though, if beautiful on one hand, it was unsettling on the other.
Prior to my trip, I had been warned of how traditional people in the remotest parts of the far west, hence of Nepal, could be. Chhuwachhut, caste-based discrimination, and the supposed untouchability of menstruating girls were fervently campaigned against by the government and civil society alike. But I had not fully understood what they, especially the latter, meant. Reading about gupha basne in Lynn Bennet’s Dangerous Wives and Sacred Sisters is not the same as actually meeting chhaupadi face to face.
Chhaupadi is a concept so foreign to me that I have yet to find an explanation or description that suffices. According to traditional Hinduism (and not different to other religions that also cast women as “impure” because they menstruate, specifically while they are menstruating) chhaupadi separates a woman while “impure”. For a few days every month, a woman is to set herself aside. That, or she is to be set aside. It is difficult to decide how to phrase something like this, because whether it is her choice or an imposition by religion and society, is telling of what it really is.
I entered sundar sudur pachhim applauding efforts to abolish what I had perceived as an archaic tradition, but left puzzled.
It was, ironically enough, on the day I got my period this month that I met a middle-aged woman who explained to me that despite the initiatives to end chhaupadi and the merits of which she appreciated, she still could not bring herself to share the bed with her husband, to enter the household shrine, or to cook or eat in the same kitchen. In fact, she described how the addition of a small room with a bed and a fireplace made all the difference as compared to the nights she spent under a tree in years prior.
Stunned, I tried to comprehend what she was saying and how she could mean it. Could someone truly perceive herself as “impure” when something as natural as her period, something she had little or no control over, and something necessary to reproducing mankind?
No woman eagerly anticipates the cramps, PMS, and apprehensions of staining their clothing, but was it a curse or a necessary biological process, a prerequisite to childbearing? Did something natural and necessary make us women dirty, polluted and impure?
My upbringing, values and education had had me cry a resounding “No!” But her sentiment differed and challenged my perception. To her, to gain religious merit, she willingly sought to separate herself. She had participated in and then excused herself from various meetings and programs regarding the custom. And, as she clarified how she had respect for what they were saying, she simply could not bring herself to make the change.
As such and without suggesting chhaupadi be abolished or preserved, it simply occurred to me that it was no different to the burkhas of the Muslim world that the likes of Chandra Mohanty discuss. As Mohanty argues, to ban burkhas is once again to deny a woman her choice. But I wonder if choice alone is enough. Cultural pressure, religious implication, and the social construct not just shape but demand a certain decision. An informed choice, free of any pressure, would be ideal. But we don’t live in an ideal world.
And so, are efforts to remove their cultural sans religious ways tampering their freedom, or ushering their liberation? Because my personal disdain towards chhaupadi is inappropriate for another’s well-informed and un-pressured decision for it.
In any case, chhaupadi in this extreme may only be found in the most remote corners of our country, but forms of it still prevail even amidst the educated (upper)-middle-class of Kathmandu, but I know of no campaigns to counter it around here. The Supreme Court in 2005 declared the practice evil and ordered the government to proceed to eradicate it. However, plenty of girls are denied entrance to the kitchen or the opportunity to embrace their brothers lest they contaminate the sacred janai in Kathmandu houses.
A majority of Nepali Christian churches do not encourage women preaching from the pulpit, whether this is because it is considered more appropriate for them to merely sit and listen, or it is to serve the same underlying reason – to sideline them while they are “impure” during and due to their period is something I wonder. After all, as Nepali Christians who are so heavily influenced by the larger Hindu community, perhaps (and despite many of their vehement denials) they are following suit as many Hindu girls are to refrain from supposedly contaminating household shrine or kitchen with their presence.
Of course, chhaupadi also serves its function and gives women “time off” from kitchen duty. But is it dignified time off or is it an excuse, a reason, to ostracize women? I cannot say because I have not experienced it. I can only express my inability to find a satisfying concluding remark regarding this custom. In my personal opinion, if you were to put me up at the Radisson during my period because of its power to pollute, I would not be comforted. Whether I am on the bare ground, in a shed, or a five-star room, to be set aside because I am “impure” makes explicit the case that the mentality remains. I would have to argue that from the “remote” districts of the far west to the “urban” centers like Kathmandu, the concept remains even if the severity, degree and form may differ. As such, chhaupadi is, as chhaupadi was.
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