📝 Editorial Policy

Roopalia publishes two kinds of writing: product reviews, and articles on Indian tradition and culture. Both are researched and written by Dhanpat Singh, who spent 39 years in the Rajasthan judiciary as a Personal Assistant to various judges, a large part of that work being the drafting of judgments. He holds a Diploma in Mass Communication.

That background sets the standard this site tries to hold to: a claim is not a finding until it is supported. What follows is how that works in practice.

1. We name our sources

Where an article gives a date, a muhurat or a research finding, we say where it came from — the panchang, the institution, the study. Readers should be able to check us, not simply trust us.

2. We keep scripture, belief and speculation apart

This is the rule we apply most often, and it is the one most commonly broken elsewhere.

• If a text actually says something, we name the text.
• If a story lives in folk tradition without a traceable source, we call it a popular belief — not "written in the scriptures".
• If we searched and could not verify a widely repeated claim, we tell the reader that we could not verify it.

You will find this stated openly inside our articles. In our piece on the bindi we note that the Bhagavad Gita speaks of meditation at the brow point but issues no instruction to wear a bindi. In our piece on bangles we note that the often-quoted line about Shiva gifting lac bangles to Parvati could not be traced to any authoritative source.

3. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement

On festival dates and muhurat timings, reliable panchangs sometimes differ — usually because the calculation depends on local sunrise. Rather than pick one silently, we show the reader both figures and explain why they differ, and we point out that timings must be checked for their own city.

4. We do not repeat unverified health claims

A great deal of lifestyle writing recycles health claims that have no evidence behind them. We decline to do that, even when the claim is flattering to the tradition we are writing about.

Our article on sindoor sets out the published research on lead content in market sindoor and states plainly that the popular claim about mercury reducing stress is false and unsafe. Our article on bangles states that the circulation and fatigue claims made for glass bangles have no scientific evidence behind them.

For anything touching health, we direct readers to a doctor. We do not present ourselves as a medical source.

5. Traditions are described, not prescribed

Customs around fasting, adornment and marital status vary enormously by region and family, and many carry real emotional weight. We describe what different communities do and where a practice is social custom rather than religious requirement, we say so. We do not tell any woman what she must wear or observe.

6. How the writing is produced

The research, the factual judgements and the final edit are human — Dhanpat Singh's own. AI tools are used as an assistant only, mainly to help cross-check facts against multiple sources and to prepare illustrations. Nothing is published without being verified and edited by a human being.

All images on this site are AI-generated and are labelled as such within every article that uses them. We do not present AI illustrations as photographs of real people or real events.

7. We correct our mistakes

When we find an error, we fix it rather than leave it standing.

As one example: our Navratri 2026 article initially listed Durga Ashtami on 18 October, following a day-by-day count. On checking the actual tithi timings we found the Ashtami tithi runs from 8:27 AM on 18 October to 10:51 AM on 19 October — which, by the udaya tithi rule, places the observance on 19 October. We corrected the article, the FAQs and the structured data, and added a section explaining why a Navratri "day" and a tithi are not the same thing.

If you find something wrong on this site, please write to contact@roopalia.com. Corrections are welcome and are acted on.

8. Affiliate links and independence

Some product reviews contain affiliate links, from which we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to the reader. This never determines what we recommend, and we describe drawbacks as readily as strengths.

Our tradition and culture articles carry no affiliate links at all. They exist to inform, not to sell. Full details are in our Affiliate Disclosure.

9. What we will not publish

• Paid reviews presented as independent opinion
• Medical or astrological guarantees of any kind
• Claims attributed to scripture that we cannot locate in scripture
• Content that shames a woman for what she wears, observes or does not observe