Gross indignity

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Gross indignity

Thursday, 20 February 2020 | Pioneer

Gross indignity

When teachers and spiritual leaders endorse myths around menstruation, policies don’t mean anything

For a Government which is prioritising menstrual health and hygiene as part of policy, its loyalist followers are harming it by perpetuating medieval myths around a biological process. And it comes as a huge shock when educators of a modern society — women at that — subject others to the cruellest form of mental and emotional trauma over something as natural as menstruation as was done recently in a college in Gujarat. Sixty eight students at a hostel in Bhuj were made to strip before teachers to prove that they were not menstruating. What led to this outrage was the fact that the girls, who are undergraduate students at the Shree Sahajanand Girls Institute (SSGI), run by the Swaminarayan sect, were flouting a set of preposterous rules set by the college for them to follow during their periods. The discriminatory and utterly humiliating diktat bars students from entering the college temple, kitchen or touching other girls. In the classroom, they are expected to sit on the last bench and at meal time they have to sit away from others like pariahs and clean their own dishes. Not just this, the hostel keeps a register on when the students get their periods over a two-month cycle. Quite understandably not one girl had entered her name in it. Ironically, after the traumatised students raised a hue and cry over this nightmarish incident, the  Principal squarely blamed the students for not following the rules and thus bringing the outrage upon themselves. What made matters worse was the statement by Krushnaswarup Dasji, a religious leader, that menstruating women, who cooked for their husbands, would be reborn as dogs and men consuming such food would be reborn as bullocks! This beats all evolutionary theory and entrenches the worst superstition.

Such words, coming from people who wield influence over the minds of others, particularly in rural India, are disturbing due to the sheer lack of sensitivity and violation of human rights, apart from the fact that they perpetuate illogical beliefs. Myths and taboos surrounding menstruation have to be broken down and a scientific temper has to be developed before Government schemes, incentives, health workers and social organisations succeed in their efforts to improve the lot of women. Over 60,000 cases of cervical cancer deaths are reported every year, mostly due to poor menstrual hygiene. A whopping 23 million girls drop out of school annually. This in a country that has a temple dedicated to fertility.

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