By Sharanya Gopinathan
Reminding us why we shouldn’t let men say things, Congress interim state president M M Hassan, responding to a question on why women aren’t allowed in the Sabarimala temple, said, “Menstruation is impure and women shouldn’t be allowed to enter places of worship during those days.”
He was speaking at an event for journalism students, and women participants weren’t having it. One woman informed him that if menstrual blood is impure, the same blood is running through his veins, after which he clarified that what he meant was that women shouldn’t go into temples when menstruating. Which actually neither clarifies anything nor answers the original question, but hey ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This of course led people on Twitter to ask some pertinent questions:
https://twitter.com/sumonlailai1/status/846762577355001858
After lots of outrage, the Congress party, referring to what he said as a “casual comment”, said that Hassan’s views were personal.
But Hassan wasn’t so sure himself just how to categorise his views, or if the views were even his own. Scroll.in reports that he said both of these sentences: “My opinion is that women should not go to temple, mosque or church when their body is impure,” and, “My remark about impurity is not my opinion”.
This debate around menstruation, impurity and women is one that is constantly on the back burner in Kerala, mostly because women between the ages of ten and 50 aren’t allowed to enter Sabarimala temple in Kerala. In November 2015, Kerala spawned the ‘Happy to Bleed’ Campaign on Facebook, where they posted photos of themselves holding placards that said ‘Happy to Bleed’ after the head priest of the Sabarimala Temple in Kerala said that women would be allowed into the temple only when a machine that detected if women were menstruating was invented. Of course, this also spawned a ‘Ready to Wait’ campaign of women who were ready to wait until they reached menopause to go to Sabarimala temple.