Chhaupadi

Template:Linkless-date Chhaupadi is a western Nepalese system practiced where women are barred from participating in normal family activities during menstruation because they are considered impure. The affected women are kept in the shed with cows and other animals. This lasts eleven days when an adolescent girl has her first period and four to seven for every following one. Childbirth also results in an eleven-day impure state.

Women are forbidden to touch men and even to enter the courtyard of their own homes. They are barred from consuming milk, yogurt, butter, and other nutritious food, for fear they will forever mar those goods. The women must survive on a diet of dry foods, salt, and rice. They cannot use warm blankets and are allowed only a small rug; most commonly only things like "jute sacks". They are also restricted from going to school or performing their daily functions like taking a bath, forced to stay in the barbaric conditions of the shed.

This system comes from the superstition of impurity during their menstruation period. In this superstitious logic, if she touches the tree it will never again bear fruit; if she consumes milk the cow will not give anymore milk; if she reads a book about Saraswoti (the goddess of Education), he will become angry; if she touches a man, he will be ill.

Many people are raising their voices to abolish these practices, and recently, a case has been filed in the Supreme Court of Nepal to forever eliminate these cruelties.

External links

• (BBC) Women hail menstruation ruling