In 2015, students of Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University, in an effort to raise awareness about rape and sexism, stuck sanitary pads with feminist messages all over their campus. They were inspired by a German artist’s public art project in Karlsruhe city, though their university wasn’t too impressed. The administration promptly took down the messages. But not before the pads with messages intending to draw attention to the challenges faced by women started cropping up in other college areas too.

Fast forward to April 2016, across the border. Students of Beaconhouse National University, a private 13-year-old varsity in Lahore, wanted to protest aesthetically against something as part of a college assignment. The students – Mavera Rahim, Eman Suleman, Mehsum Basharat, Noor Fatima, Sherbaz Lehri of the Department of Liberal Arts along with their friend Asad Sheikh from the Department of Information & Technology – decided upon an issue that is a reality for many women.

The students, all in their early twenties, covered a wall of their university with 25 sanitary pads with messages protesting against “the stigma attached to menstruation and the sharmindagi (shame)” with which the subject is discussed. The pads either had facts about periods or taboo questions.

Further, to normalise periods, Rahim and Suleman painted stains on their white kameezes and interacted with Sheikh and Basharat. “We spoke to them as if everything was alright and nothing was gross, weird or wrong,” Suleman said. Fatima and Lehri were clicking images.

“Obviously we knew this would be controversial but did not know it would garner such a response from people outside of BNU as well,” revealed Rahim. “The response has been mixed from people thanking us for speaking out about this issue to people saying we are beghairat (shameless), behaya (brazen), sluts, etc.” Some people compared menstruation blood to excrement.

On the positive side, Suleman and Rahim said it was uplifting to come across men and women who care about breaking the taboo around menstruation. “Many people have stood by our side,” said Rahim. “My brother and sisters are very supportive of this, even though not all of them live here and I think it’s great. There’s also been a surge of support on social media, which I would like to thank everyone for.”

Suleman continued, “The response goes to show exactly why this is an important issue that needs to be addressed. Especially when girls too are disgusted by it. A friend of mine wrote ‘Internalized hatred is real, especially when you’ve been conditioned to view your healthy body functions as disgusting and unnatural’. It’s a life-long process to unlearn these behaviours, for women and men alike. I know that I’m still struggling with it. The patriarchy runs deep.”

The pads were up on the wall on April 7 and April 8.

The students were worried that they would be asked to immediately take the pads down but that did not happen. “We left it up and it stayed up for another day after that as well, and then was taken down,” explained Rahim. “But I don’t think that that’s a bad sign because after a certain amount of time they even remove art installations around university.”

Here's a Facebook post doing the rounds on social media:

Twitter too jumped on the bandwagon with its take on the protest: