In April, a Class 8 student was made to write her annual examination outside the classroom in a private school near Pollachi in Coimbatore district just because she was on her period. It’s most shocking that this happened in Tamil Nadu, one of the most developed States that consistently scores highly in health indices. The school authorities denied the girl child the right to take her exams inside the classroom. What does this violation tell about us as a society?
The true purpose of education is to ignite minds, dispel ignorance, and challenge harmful myths. People who play key roles in society, especially educators, should set an example using their influence to spread awareness against superstitions and wrongful practices. But here, the girl was humiliated before her peers simply for experiencing a natural biological function.
Related articles
This sends a damaging message that menstruation is something impure, and that a menstruating girl should be segregated. It was not just an act of exclusion. It told her, subtly but surely, that her body was a problem. That to be a girl, and to become a woman, is to be burdened with shame. It raises urgent questions: is menstruation impure, and why should a girl be treated differently after she attains puberty?
Even today in many places, when a girl gets her first period, it is celebrated with grandeur. The celebration of a girl’s entry into womanhood is often marked by her first menstruation (menarche), which is rooted in ancient cultural, social, and religious traditions across the world. These celebrations are deeply symbolic, signifying fertility, maturity, and readiness for new roles in society. In agrarian and tribal societies, fertility (both agricultural and human) was vital for survival. Therefore, a girl’s ability to menstruate was seen as a significant sign that she could now bear children, which meant she was contributing to the survival of her community.
While historical rituals around menstruation and womanhood may have begun as community acknowledgements of maturity or spiritual power, today, many of these practices are misused or misunderstood. This leads to gender-based discrimination and control. What was once sacred is now often seen as impure or shameful. In parts of South India, the Ritu Kala ceremony, a celebration once, has become commercialised and socially regressive, reducing girls to marriage-ready objects.
Degraded practices
Girls, upon attaining puberty, are often told how to behave, dress, talk, walk, sleep, and even eat. Why can’t a girl be the same even after her puberty? It is a natural biological change, just like any other change that happens to a growing human body. Blood is not impure; it is something vital to life itself.
In an era when women fly to space, such taboos still persist — menstruation is even today seen with shame, silence, and stigma. These practices make girls feel inferior and ashamed of their bodies. Women think that they are lesser beings than men. In many homes, under the guise of tradition, menstruating women are forbidden from family functions, using common utensils, and even coming anywhere near other family members. Girls are told not to enter kitchens or temples, and advised to stay silent, unseen, and even unclean. These restrictions not only isolate them but also creates stress in them. Some are forced to take harmful medications to delay their periods just to take part in family events.
The crime of forcing the girl child to take her exams seated on a staircase underscores the urgent need to address and dismantle the deep-seated taboos and discriminatory practices associated with menstruation in India. This is not just about one school or one child. It is about countless girls across India who internalise the idea that their physiology makes them unclean, lesser or inconvenient. When a girl is made to sit apart, denied entry, or whispered about during her periods, it is a punishment to her. Educational institutions must take proactive steps to create inclusive and supportive environments for menstruating students. Teachers must be trained to respond with sensitivity, not superstition.
With menolit studies, a pioneering interdisciplinary initiative that aims to reframe societal understandings of menstruation, menopause, and womanhood, literature, media, and education must play a role in reshaping these narratives.
Menolit studies explore how these bodily functions are narrated, celebrated, silenced, or shamed in literature and society. It reclaims the power of the first and last bleeding as not just biological facts, but cultural turning points, helping reshape the way people understand and honour womanhood across a lifetime. The rituals may not require to be erased, but their original benign intent should be reclaimed.
Let us teach girls that they are not defined by blood or biology alone, but by their minds, ambitions, and achievements.
Courtesy: ‘The Hindu’
