Tax on Blood: Access, Boundaries, & Class in the Discourses on Menstruation in India

This study examines the discourses and practices around menstruation amongst Hindu and Muslim women with mixed caste backgrounds, but shared urban and emerging middle class identities in Gwalior, India. Drawing on ethnographic... [ view full abstract ]

This study examines the discourses and practices around menstruation amongst Hindu and Muslim women with mixed caste backgrounds, but shared urban and emerging middle class identities in Gwalior, India. Drawing on ethnographic research with women between the ages of 19 and 64 and Twitter feeds from the #lahukalagaan (tax on blood) campaign, this study seeks to understand the ways in which access to menstrual products, competing ideas of the body, and appropriate menstrual management are negotiated. An analysis of gendered taxation through the lens of the #lahukalagaan movement and the materiality and economy of cotton reflects class-based consumption of menstrual products, which sheds light on access and women’s abilities to participate in these expectations. Furthermore, by examining an urban community made up of both Hindus and Muslims, this study also seeks to expand existing understandings of menstrual practice, which have focussed on the maintenance of caste structure amongst Hindus. Class emerges as a more significant marker of difference and convergence in Gwalior and reveals an overlap in practices amongst Hindus and Muslims, despite narrative departures. Moving through the scales of the body, the urban community, and the nation, this study moves beyond dichotomies of purity and pollution to show how the conceptions, rhetoric, and boundaries surrounding menstruation reflect not just the expected markers and boundaries of caste and religion but also of class, ideas of modernity, and citizenship.