Who Was Excluded, and the Argument Over Reopening It

Classical sources restrict upanayana, and the Vedic study and twice born status it confers, to boys of the three varnas traditionally described as twice born, Brahmin, Kshatriya, and Vaishya, explicitly excluding Shudras and, in the great majority of traditional sources and historical practice, excluding girls entirely from the rite and the Vedic study it opens access to, an exclusion that shaped who could formally claim twice born status for a very long span of Indian religious history.

Reform movements of the modern period took this exclusion as a direct target rather than leaving it unaddressed: the nineteenth century Arya Samaj, founded by Swami Dayananda Saraswati, argued explicitly that Vedic study and the upanayana that grants access to it should not be restricted by birth or by sex, and performed the ceremony for girls and for members of communities the classical texts had excluded, a position that put the movement in direct and open disagreement with more conservative interpreters of the same textual tradition. That disagreement has not been resolved into a single settled modern consensus; contemporary practice varies considerably, with some communities and families now performing upanayana for girls as a matter of course, others maintaining it as a boys only rite in keeping with older custom, and the underlying question of who properly qualifies for the second birth the ceremony confers remaining a live point on which Hindu communities and authorities continue to differ rather than agree.