Hygiene

Orthoprax Hindus (that is, Hindus who
stress correct religious practice) lay
great stress on cleanliness of their bodies and their immediate environment.
Although to the outside eye this scrupulous attention would seem to indicate a
concern for hygiene, these actions are
performed primarily to protect and
retain religious purity.
In many cases, concerns for hygiene
and purity overlap, as in the pervasive
practice of bathing (snana) and the
regulations concerning bodily cleanliness. Both of these simultaneously
remove dirt and impurity (ashaucha),
but in other cases these concerns
clearly diverge.
One example of this divergence is
the way that household refuse is often
simply put out in the street—a practice that keeps the home pure and
clean, but which fosters unhygienic
conditions directly outside the home.
Another example of this disjunction
can be seen in the traditional use of
cow dung as a purifying substance, or
the way that the Ganges River is
always considered pure, even in its
lower reaches where it is full of sewage
and industrial effluents. These examples clearly show that purity and
hygiene are very different concepts
and that, from a religious perspective,
purity is by far the more important of
the two.