This is the first article in TNM’s two-part series exploring how menstrual segregation is practiced in rural and urban spaces in India, even today. You may read the second article here.
At Naicker Theru in Ariyagoundampatti, a village in rural Tamil Nadu, a 13-year-old girl who was on the first day of her period was sitting on the steps of a designated ‘resthouse’ – a place meant for menstruating girls and women to be isolated and kept in while on their period. The resthouse has a dilapidated bathroom and the water tank was filled with algae. Inside the dusty, cobweb-ridden room which could hardly accommodate three people, eight people are often crammed in. These ‘rest houses’ are called muttuveedu or muttutharai.
The building was inaugurated in 2007 by former Adi Dravidar Welfare Minister A Tamizharasi and was meant to serve as a community hall but is instead used as sequestering room for menstruating women.
Many women see sequestering inside a house as empowering and may ask what is wrong with the practice when they can rest with co-menstruators and don’t have to do housework. But this ‘rest’ is only for household chores, and not for agricultural work. Most villages in Tamil Nadu largely depend on rainfed cultivation for livelihood. Rainfed cultivation, unlike irrigated agriculture, requires hard labour. Both men and women have to equally toil to grow and harvest crops in the drier part of this state. Regardless of whether women are on their periods or not, they must show up every day to work. Sequestering only keeps them away from their houses, and it is not meant for them to take rest for five days.
TNM visited several villages in three districts of Tamil Nadu – Namakkal, Madurai, and Virudhunagar to find out how prevalent muttuveedu is and why it’s still being practiced. Most often, the muttuveedu was nothing but a single-doored, clay tile-roofed room, located in the centre of the village, which means anyone can find out who is on their period and who is not.
In July 2023, a female vlogger caused huge social media outrage for glorifying the regressive practice of menstrual segregation. She showcased a menstruating woman sitting on the road while her mother-in-law brought her food on a banana leaf. The woman was on the first day of her period and was not allowed to rest at home. Instead, she had to stay at the muttuveedu. The video was later taken down, but it shed some light on how menstrual segregation is prevalent in many parts of Tamil Nadu even today.
The particular street featured in the viral YouTube video is located at Naicker Theru (Naicker Street) in the Rasipuram taluk of Namakkal district. The residents of the street were not happy about the presence of the media in their village as they feared further attention on their ‘secret’.
The Rajakambalam Naicker community, a land-owning, agrarian community, is categorised as Most Backward Class (MBC) in Tamil Nadu. The practice of sequestering women in a separate house or space is common among the sub-castes of Naickers which include Thotti, Irakula, and Kambalathu Naickers.
During our conversation with the residents of the Naickar Theru, TNM learned that menstrual sequestering is a common practice among the Naicker communities. Residents of the street confirmed that other villages too practised segregation, but were reluctant to name them. “It is a part of our tradition. If we do not follow it, it would bring bad luck to our family members,” a woman from the village said. “The girls from poor family backgrounds, who cannot afford to take rest in their houses go there. Not every woman goes there during their period,” the residents claimed. However, menstruating women who stay back in their homes are banished to the veranda.
Meanwhile, 300 km away from Namakkal, the Kambalathu Naickers in the Kariapatti village of Virudhunagar district have done away with the practice. “It was common 30 years ago. But our generation went abroad to study and pursued careers outside our towns where there was no such practice of segregating women during their periods. Now this trend has almost vanished in our area,” a person from the Kambalathu Naicker community in Kariapatti told TNM. However, many women in the five other villages that TNM visited, who do pursue higher education and employment, have been unable to give up this problematic practice.
Tamizhselvi, a Kambalathu Naicker woman, who is also the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) Panchayat President, recalled how menstrual segregation was prevalent in her village up until 2000. “The sequestering home was right in front of my house. The village residents would build a hut in a designated area for young girls who hit puberty. They would be accompanied by their grandmothers or aunts for one week. Later, it was made mandatory for menstruating women to stay sequestered in that house. Many villages in Rajapalayam where the Rajakambala Naickers liv,e still follow this practice. They usually do not talk about this to outsiders and they maintain it as a secret,” said Tamizhselvi.
Advocate Selvi, a state-level organiser of Manithi, an independent and secular organisation that fights against gender-based violence in Tamil Nadu, said that superstitions are rampant and that there are more social restrictions for the Rajakambala Naicker women. “In the villages where I work, women are still not allowed to wear blouses in their clan temples during poojas. Up until a decade ago, family planning was restricted simply because it was against the teachings of their clan’s deities. Whenever we try to implement something for their welfare, they would reject it saying that it is not aligned with their community’s traditions. From stopping girls getting an education, to restricting boys from travelling further, they even stopped the bus services in one village where I worked,” Selvi explained.
Women in all the villages TNM visited used the stock response of culture and tradition to justify menstrual sequestering. Speaking to TNM, Priya, a resident of Naickar Theru, said that the practice of sequestering women during their menstrual period is not a forced one at the outset. “We voluntarily go to that house. The video that went viral typecasted us and called this practice outdated and unnecessary. But we are doing it for the welfare of our families,” she said.
“It is just our tradition and we want to keep it alive forever. Bringing this to the media would be an insult to our women who strongly believe in culture and tradition,” said Vasantha, another resident of the village.
When asked about feeding the menstruating women on the road, Vasantha normalised the practice by saying that eating just outside the house is very common in the villages and that people who know the ‘customs’ of villages never make an issue out of it. When asked whether she would ask her son to sit and eat on the open road, she said that her son doesn’t have ‘menstrual problems’.
Speaking to TNM, folklorist AK Perumal said that Telugu-speaking communities in Tamil Nadu practiced muttuveedu for many centuries. The legend of Madurai Veeran, a Tamil folk deity, confirmed that the practice of muttuveedu was prevalent in the 1600s. Perumal said that as per the legend, Madurai Veeran was appointed as a guard to the place, where Bommi, the daughter of chieftain Bommanna Nayakan, was sequestering. It was there that Madurai Veeran fell in love with Bommi.
Perumal also pointed out that menstrual segregation was not only practised among the Naicker communities, but also that many privileged communities in Tamil Nadu still consider women ‘impure’ during their menstruation. “The only difference being that instead of muttuveedu, the seclusion happens inside their houses,” he noted.
TNM visited five Dalit villages in Virudhunagar and Madurai, on the foothills of the Watrap Hills, and found that menstrual segregation is practised among the communities residing there. A 35-year-old muttuveedu located at the centre of the Pottalpacheri village of Madurai district has weeds growing inside and out. An inscription on the building’s inauguration block calls the construction a ‘Pengal Nala Viduthi’, which translates to women’s care centre, that was built through crowdfunding.
Forty-five-year-old Shanmugathai, a resident of Pottalpacheri, said that because the muttuveedu is defunct, menstruating women are forced to sleep outside. “Now, we have to sleep outside our houses. See, I sleep next to the iron stove,” she said, pointing to an iron stove that is fixed outside her house in the open. She said that her neighbour sleeps inside the goat shed during her menstrual period.
When TNM asked what she would do for food during her period, she said that either her husband or her sons cook for the family. “Usually, daughters would cook for their mothers. But, I have two sons. My son, who is an engineering graduate, cooks for me,” she said, worried to see men like her son having to cook.
Over the last decade, Koovalapuram and its neighbouring villages – Chinnayapuram Pottalpacheri, K Pudupatti, Saptur Alagiri, and Govindanallur – have been in the news for sequestering menstruating women for five days, mothers and newborns for 30 days in muttuveedu. Women from these villages, like the Naicker women, also reiterate that they are ‘not forced’ to go to the rest house, but that they are simply ‘following their traditions’.
Muttuveedu is an undeclared norm in the five villages TNM visited, with women who married into these communities also expected to follow the practice. “I went blank after they asked me to stay inside the muttuveedu, when I got my first period after my marriage. It was shocking and very new. As an outsider to this village, it was quite difficult to understand the practice but now, I’m quite okay with that,” said a resident from the Koovalapuram village of the Madurai district.
Mangalam (48) of K Pudupatti boasts that her two daughters-in-law from Kerala use the muttuveedu without questioning the practice. Notably, in these villages, women from the Pallar community – categorised as Scheduled Caste (SC) in the state – follow the practice uncompromisingly. Social pressure and superstition have conditioned women from 300 households to accept this centuries-old practice to stay inside the asphalt-sheet-covered sequestering rooms in their respective villages.
“The practice was there for many years even before my grandmother hit puberty. Back then, it was a hut with coconut fronds and bamboo. Later, when I started to menstruate, we demanded a solid structure with a roof and electricity. A structure with a roof and electricity is not capable of accommodating many women at a time now. So we built a new one three years ago,” Paappa (53), a resident of Koovalapuram told TNM.
The old construction she mentions still exists in a dilapidated condition. Behind it is a newly constructed building with polythene sacks in which women keep their plates, tumblers, and all the necessary items including a mirror as they frequent the muttuveedu every month. The door was left open to let fresh air in, while two women were taking rest on the empty floor.
When TNM asked about the toilet facilities, the women's faces fell. "All of us use the nearby acacia grove for defecation, so it is normal for menstruating women too to use the same," said 23-year-old Deepa, a mother to a one-year-old girl, who added that residents did ask the panchayat to construct a toilet for them.
New mothers have to live in the muttuveedu as well. “During our menstrual period, our husbands or in-laws prepare food for us and keep it here. During postpartum, if the kid's father and grandparents want to see the kid, they will come and take the kid with them for some time. Then, they go back home and have a bath and continue with their regular work," Deepa said.
Accepting that the muttuveedu is not equipped to support women who have just given birth, Deepa said that now many women who go for Caesarean deliveries ,(C-section) spend their first month inside their houses and repaint them as a part of the theettu kazhikkuradhu, a ritual to make an ‘impure’ thing ‘pure’.
The muttuveedu in Tamil Nadu may have caused several health issues for menstruating women, but it remains under-documented since the practice is kept a secret by these communities.
Research has shown how menstrual sequestering has led to childlessness among the Muthuvan tribes of Tamil Nadu, with 30.65% of couples childless. The study noted that in Muthuvan culture, menstruating women were considered impure and sequestered in a small hut called thinnaveedu, located in an isolated corner of the hamlet, with minimal space. It is often unhygienic and unkempt, with limited facilities for cooking. Women and girls were reported to feel scared during their time inside the huts because the Muthuvan settlements are located inside dense forests. "To overcome this situation, they started to consume oral contraceptive pills with the aim of avoiding the thinnaiveedu," the study noted, pointing it out as one of the main reasons for the Muthuvan community women having no children of their own. The oral contraceptive pills were made available by the government through its National Programme for Family Planning.
In Pandalur and Gudalur of the Nilgiris, the Kaattunaikar tribes have dedicated huts called gudda for menstruating women. Sixty-three Kaattunaikar settlements in the Nilgiris have guddas. Besides, the Kattunaikar and Kota tribes also follow the practice of having separate houses for menstruating women in their villages. The Muthuvar tribes of the Anamalai Reserve also follow the practice of maintaining menstrual segregation huts called thinnaiveedu. This practice is also prevalent in the Badaga community in the Nilgiris and they called such houses Olegidy.
The practice of menstrual sequestering is not limited to Tamil Nadu alone. According to The Guardian, the Gond and Madiya tribes in Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, and Odisha still practice banishing women and girls during their menstruation, and their menstrual huts are called gaokors or kurma ghar. In these areas, tribal women are often unprotected from the attacks of wild animals. The practice of sequestering women on their periods is also reportedly more common in communities that follow Hinduism. Practising chhaupadi, someone who bears an impurity, is prevalent among Nepali Hindus. In 2018, after many women died of harsh weather, smoke inhalation, and being attacked by wild animals, the Nepal government announced that forcing menstruating women into seclusion is a punishable offense that warrants three months in jail.
Dr Kalpana, a Madurai-based gynaecologist said that the compulsion to be in the sequestering house for three to five days makes women ignore their health conditions, especially when they have irregular periods as they would go there and pretend that they are in their menstrual periods and risk not getting early-stage treatments for menstrual disorders. “The government should educate women against internalising such conditioned practices,” she observed.
Menstrual stigma is a topic that needs comprehensive intervention to normalise discussing the menstrual period and menstrual dignity, so that more women are not conditioned into believing that sequestering themselves during menstruation is their duty.