Chhaupadi

Chhaupadi is the practice, documented in far western Nepal and adjoining districts, of banishing menstruating women and girls, and in some communities also women who have recently given birth, from the family home to a separate shed, cattle byre or outbuilding, justified by a claim of ritual impurity attached to menstrual blood that the practice treats as too dangerous or polluting to remain under the same roof as the rest of the household, particularly its religious objects and its male members. Unlike several other menstrual restriction customs documented elsewhere in this atlas, which vary considerably in severity from mild ritual seclusion to simple temple avoidance, chhaupadi as practised in its documented Nepali form has directly and repeatedly caused deaths, from exposure to cold, from smoke inhalation when women light fires for warmth in poorly ventilated sheds, from snake bites and animal attacks, and from suffocation, a pattern of serious, recurring physical harm that distinguishes chhaupadi from most other religiously framed menstrual restriction practices in severity and documented consequence.

Nepal's Supreme Court ordered the practice ended as early as 2005, and the Nepali government subsequently issued formal guidelines aimed at eliminating chhaupadi and, in 2017, criminalised the practice outright through legislation imposing fines and imprisonment on those who force a woman into chhaupadi exile, making Nepal one of the few states to have taken direct legal action specifically against a menstrual restriction practice on public safety and human rights grounds. Despite this legal prohibition, chhaupadi has proven difficult to eliminate on the ground, persisting in various forms across parts of far western Nepal due to deeply rooted local religious and social belief that outpaces formal legal change, and continued fatalities have been reported in Nepali and international press coverage in the years since criminalisation, prompting ongoing government, non governmental and community based public health and education campaigns aimed at ending the underlying belief and social pressure rather than relying on legal prohibition alone. The atlas records chhaupadi as a documented, named practice with real, repeatedly fatal consequences and a clear, formal legal status as a criminal offence in Nepal, information the practice's continuing persistence makes directly relevant rather than merely historical.