Nepal's Daughters Challenge Exclusion From Funeral Rites and the Right to Mourn

A Daughter at Her Mother's Funeral Pyre

At 18, Durga stood at Pashupati Aryaghat in Kathmandu, determined to light her mother's funeral pyre. She had no brothers. A priest demanded a man take her place, while villagers appealed for any man to step forward. Durga, whose name is a pseudonym, refused to surrender the responsibility.

Durga explained why she believed the final farewell belonged to her:

She was my mother. Who else had more right to give her peace?

The resistance continued beyond the cremation ground. The priest initially refused to conduct the mourning ceremonies, warning that her actions would bring misfortune and deny her mother's soul salvation. He eventually relented but delayed the rituals. Neighbors ostracized the family, refusing even to drink water in their home.

For Durga, losing her mother meant facing another painful experience: having her place as a grieving daughter challenged by the people responsible for helping her family through death.

Her experience reflects a wider conflict in Nepal, where funeral and ancestral rites remain largely the responsibility of sons. Daughters can find themselves excluded regardless of their devotion, their closeness to a parent or the care they provided during that parent's life.

At the center of the dispute is shraddha, the ritual offering made to honor deceased parents and ancestors. The belief that sons alone can secure peace for ancestral souls continues to shape family decisions. Women who challenge that belief are asking for something deeply personal: the opportunity to honor their own parents without being treated as less worthy than a male relative.

Why Sons Receive the Ritual Responsibility

Shraddha is a central Hindu observance intended to honor and appease the spirits of deceased ancestors. Offerings of food and water and the chanting of Sanskrit mantras form part of these practices. Lighting the funeral pyre belongs to the related funeral rites through which families bid farewell to the dead.

Families understand these acts as helping the departed soul attain peace and securing continued blessings for those who remain. Traditionally, the eldest son performs the rites. Another male relative usually takes responsibility if there is no son.

The belief behind this arrangement is that a son can ensure the salvation of his ancestors' souls. A daughter's participation, according to those who oppose it, could deprive the deceased of punya, meaning spiritual merit.

Families without sons therefore sometimes turn to distant male relatives or hire priests instead of allowing daughters to lead. The person chosen may have had a much less intimate relationship with the deceased than the daughter standing beside them.

Women, activists and some religious scholars increasingly challenge this hierarchy. Their objections concern both religious interpretation and the value assigned to a daughter's relationship with her parents. For a grieving family, the argument becomes concrete when someone must decide who will approach the pyre, make an offering or lead the mourning ceremonies.

A Childhood Loss Remembered

Radhika Sapkota, a women's rights activist and executive director of Sahayatri Samaj Nepal, remembers encountering similar discrimination when her mother died. She was 13.

Sapkota described how being a daughter outweighed her closeness to her mother in the eyes of those deciding who should perform the rites:

We were the ones who loved our mother the most, yet society dismissed our devotion because we were daughters," Sapkota says. "A distant male relative was valued more just because he was male. Could his grief and devotion be greater than ours?

Durga's experience and Sapkota's recollection show how disputes over ritual authority reach into the most intimate moments of bereavement. A daughter is mourning a parent while also confronting an expectation that someone else has a stronger claim to perform the farewell.

Community pressure can continue after a ceremony ends. In Durga's case, the refusal to drink water at the family home made exclusion part of everyday life. The consequences extended beyond disagreement with a priest to the family's relationships with its neighbors.

Marriage Changes a Daughter's Place

Gotra, a system of lineage traced through men, is central to explanations for excluding married daughters. Under this understanding of marriage, a woman's gotra transfers to her husband's family, and her ritual responsibilities shift with it.

A ritual marking that transfer involves the father eating only one meal, mirroring an observance associated with a death in the family. Sociologist Narayani Devkota challenges what this says about a daughter's continuing place in her original home:

They call it 'gotra sarne,' but I see it as performing shraddha for a daughter while she's still alive.

For married daughters, these rules can affect both how they mourn and how they are mourned. Under the practice described, when a married woman dies, her parents and brothers are not permitted to perform her funeral rites.

The responsibility instead falls to her son, if she has one, or to distant male relatives on her husband's side. A hired priest may take the role. The husband himself is also excluded from performing the ritual.

A woman's marriage therefore changes which family is considered responsible for her rites, while a man's ties to his birth family remain intact. For daughters who continue to love and care for their parents after marriage, this ritual separation can conflict with the relationships they live every day.

Different Communities, Unequal Mourning

Brahmin families are described as particularly rigid in their rules, but gender restrictions also appear among Newar and Madheshi communities. Caste, class and local custom shape how families observe death and who is allowed to participate.

In Newar tradition, only male relatives can lead funeral ceremonies. Widows are required to wear white for a year, avoid rich foods and sleep on the floor for 45 days after their husband's death. Men face no equivalent restrictions when their wives die.

Medhavi Shrestha, a student of journalism and English literature, pointed to another unequal expectation: the different mourning periods assigned to a married woman's two families.

A married woman can mourn her maternal family for just four days but must mourn her husband's family for 13. Why does mourning even have a gendered timeline?

The periods Shrestha describes differ by nine days. The longer observance is more than three times the shorter one, assigning a married woman a much greater formal mourning obligation toward her husband's family.

In rural Madheshi regions, women are often barred from cremation grounds altogether. They may be forbidden to approach the pyre or take part in the rituals. Religious authorities enforce these restrictions alongside community pressure and the threat of social ostracism.

For women living under such rules, participation depends on more than personal resolve. A decision to attend or lead a ceremony can affect their standing within the community long after the funeral.

The Sisters Who Performed Their Mother's Rites

In 2019, Sangita and Sarala Duwadi performed their mother's final rites in Dhading district. The two sisters took responsibility despite the expectation that sons should carry out the ceremonies.

Their father, Bishwaram Duwadi, publicly praised their decision and expressed hope that it would encourage other families to value daughters equally:

Thank you, my lovely daughters, for breaking the traditional stereotype and taking the responsibility of performing the final rites of your mother all by yourselves. I hope this will set an example that no daughter is less than a son.

The sisters' experience shows the difference family support can make. Where Durga faced pressure to step aside, Sangita and Sarala received public recognition from their father for accepting the responsibility.

Such acts remain rare, although they have become more visible, particularly in urban areas and among families with progressive attitudes. Social media has helped circulate these stories, encouraging others to question beliefs that have long governed funeral practice.

Women challenging those expectations can still face severe backlash. In rural communities where tradition carries greater authority, the prospect of social exclusion can weigh heavily on a family's decision. Public examples of daughters performing rites exist alongside the continuing pressure to choose a male relative.

Scripture and Custom Are Being Contested

Narayani Devkota and other scholars argue that there is no explicit scriptural ban on daughters performing shraddha. Their position challenges the claim that excluding women is an unavoidable religious requirement.

Many senior priests familiar with the Dharmashastra, the Hindu codes, also regard the exclusion as a matter of custom rather than divine law. Some priests with more limited knowledge take a more rigid position and insist that women must be excluded on religious grounds.

The disagreement places religious interpretation at the center of family decisions. A priest willing to support a daughter can help a ceremony proceed, while an objection can leave a bereaved family facing delay and pressure, as Durga experienced.

Sapkota argues that the restriction serves to preserve unequal authority:

It's social control disguised as religion. The belief that women can't perform shraddha is a biased interpretation of scriptures used to maintain the status quo.

Activists and some religious reformers support that view, pointing out that Hinduism, like other religions, has changed over time and remains open to reinterpretation. Their argument gives families a way to question inherited practice while continuing to observe rituals they consider sacred.

Funeral Exclusion Reflects Wider Inequality

Uma Bhandari, president of the Rural Women's Network Nepal (Ruwon), places restrictions on mourning within a broader pattern of discrimination affecting women throughout their lives.

Bhandari described how early that unequal treatment begins:

Women in Nepal face discrimination from the womb.

A deeply ingrained preference for sons influences matters ranging from inheritance to educational opportunities. Until recently, only sons could inherit property, while women's rights to divorce or remarry were severely restricted.

Legal reforms have addressed some of these inequalities, but enforcement remains weak, particularly in rural areas. Traditional expectations continue to determine women's roles, often at the expense of their individual rights and dignity.

Bhandari also described the way a woman's place in the community can take priority over her own identity:

Nepali culture thinks of a woman's social self, a term she uses to describe a woman's role in the community, and does not focus enough on her as an individual person.

Funeral disputes bring those competing expectations into sharp focus. A daughter may understand herself as the person best placed to honor a parent, while relatives or neighbors judge her participation according to the role they believe a woman should occupy.

Women Take On Sacred Responsibilities

More women have begun performing shraddha in recent years, especially in families without sons. Some organizations have also given women responsibility for rites beyond their own families.

The Homeless Management and Rehabilitation Centre in Kathmandu has employed women such as Sapana to perform funeral rites for unclaimed bodies. Their work challenges the belief that these sacred duties can be fulfilled only by men.

During Sohra Shraddha, the annual period of 16 days devoted to honoring ancestors, some families now invite married daughters home to participate. Sons generally retain the principal responsibility, but daughters' involvement reflects a gradual change in attitudes.

Nepal's growing urbanization and the dispersal of families are also prompting people to reconsider established practices. The question of who performs a ceremony becomes more immediate when family members no longer live together or close to their ancestral home.

Participation can take different forms, from joining an ancestral observance to accepting responsibility for an entire funeral. The examples of Sapana, the Duwadi sisters and daughters returning for Sohra Shraddha show women entering roles from which they have often been excluded.

Honoring Parents in Life and Death

Shraddha also brings families together. Married daughters who have left their childhood homes may return for the observance, reconnecting with siblings while remembering their parents and ancestors.

A commentator discussing the social value of shraddha described that family connection:

Shraddha also has social value, as daughters who have married and left their homes are invited back for the ceremony, providing an opportunity to catch up with siblings and honour shared traditions.

Smaller households and urbanization are weakening some of that communal life. Elderly parents may remain in rural areas after younger relatives leave, or move into care homes. These changes have prompted debate about how children should honor their parents while they are alive as well as after death.

Some argue that the essence of shraddha lies in the love and care given to living parents rather than in ritual alone. For daughters who provide that care, exclusion from the final ceremonies can make the difference between everyday responsibility and religious recognition especially painful.

Durga's refusal to step aside and the Duwadi sisters' decision to perform their mother's rites place the same demand before families: that daughters' devotion receive recognition alongside sons' devotion. The debate concerns religious practice, but its consequences are felt in grief, family belonging and the dignity of saying goodbye.

Key Points

• Daughters in Nepal often face exclusion from funeral and ancestral rites, even when they have no brothers.
• Durga faced opposition from a priest and social ostracism after insisting on lighting her mother's funeral pyre at 18.
• Rules concerning lineage and marriage can limit a daughter's role in mourning her parents and determine who performs her own funeral rites.
• Restrictions vary across communities, with some women barred from cremation grounds and widows facing obligations that widowers do not.
• In 2019, Sangita and Sarala Duwadi performed their mother's final rites in Dhading, receiving public support from their father, Bishwaram.
• Narayani Devkota, activists and some senior priests challenge the claim that scripture explicitly bars daughters from performing shraddha.
• Women performing rites for relatives and unclaimed bodies, along with daughters participating in Sohra Shraddha, show gradual changes in practice.