For five thousand years, the statue of the nude girl from Mohenjo-Daro, commonly called the ‘Dancing Girl’ has stood with poise and confidence, resting one hand on her hip. She has survived the collapse of an entire civilization and borne witness to centuries of India’s layered and complex history. What she could not survive, apparently, was the Bhartiya Janta Party.
The BJP government that has spent the last 12 years trying to wrap the nation in saffron draped the country’s iconic prehistoric woman, in one clumsy Photoshop job, to cover up her nudity and make it ‘fit enough for NCERT school textbooks’. A government that doesn’t tire itself out proclaiming India’s rich and superior civilization to be the pioneer of everything – from science and technology to ideas – decided that it was too embarrassing to show children. It is also learnt that the statue was earlier dressed in garish pink for an exhibition to protect the nation from watching ‘too much obscenity’.
Though after a backlash, the NCERT has decided to roll back the decision, the episode reveals both BJP’s tendency to engage in some extra but selective moral gatekeeping as well as its penchant to veil things.
The Selective Morality
The BJP’s moral fig leaf came in handy to wrap the statue digitally or clothe it in a pink dress but rewind to August 2016 when the BJP governed Haryana state legislature sat in rapt attention to a 40-minute speech by a Jain monk who entered the state assembly in nude in accordance with the Digambara tradition of sky-clad renunciation. They clapped as he spoke. No one worried about what the children could see.
Nudity and eroticism are embedded in India’s rich civilization history but here’s a government that will take pride in its heritage but remains selective in what it chooses to showcase in full nudity. A monk in the assembly or the naked ash-smeared sadhus at Kumbh are fine. A bronze woman standing easy in her own skin is obscene. It’s never been about morality; it’s been about who and what they want to control.
Perhaps, when the NCERT’s committees were debating the dangers of a prehistoric bronze figurine, what went unnoticed was what was happening to real, living women in BJP-ruled India.
For almost three years, the state of Manipur has been unable to come out of the grip of ethnic violence between Kuki tribal groups and the majority Meitei community, now drawing Naga Kukis into its embrace. In 2023, more than 100 lives lost and tens of thousands were displaced. It was only after a video emerged showing a Meitei mob stripping and parading two Kuki women that India’s ruling BJP decided to react. Prime Minister Modi, who had maintained silence for over sixty days on the violence in a BJP-ruled state, finally called it a disgrace, only after the video went viral. Nothing more than that muted lip sympathy. Three years on, justice for the two Kuki-Zo women remains elusive while a five-thousand-year-old statue gets a digital wardrobe.
Then there is Bilkis Bano. A Muslim woman gang-raped while five months pregnant during the 2002 Gujarat riots appealed to the government to rescind its decision to free the 11 men jailed for life for the crime.
In August 2022, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi was speaking about women’s safety and security at India’s Independence Day, his government was freeing the rapists of Bilkis Bano, a Muslim woman gang-raped while five months pregnant during the 2002 Gujarat riots. The convicts were freed, and a viral video showed relatives and members of the Hindu Rightwing welcoming them with sweets and garlands. The Supreme Court eventually overruled the release. But it exposed what BJP’s “morality” looks like when applied to actual women.
Since Modi’s party came to power, India has witnessed a sustained spurt in violence against women. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, the overall number of crimes against women per 100,000 of the population increased from 56.3 in 2014 to 66.4 in 2022.
The BJP faced heavy criticism for its handling of sexual harassment allegations against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, former Wrestling Federation of India chief and BJP MP, after India’s most celebrated female wrestlers held a weeks-long public protest at Jantar Mantar. Singh remained an MP. The party looked the other way. Worse still, Modi was accused of knowing about the accusations against serial sexual predator Prajwal Revanna but campaigned for him in the elections anyway.
BJP’s list of mishandling sexual violence cases – from Unnao to Kathua to Hathras – is all too well documented. So is their inherently ingrained patriarchy that evinces itself in comments like ‘Kashmir ki gori gori ladkiyan’ or ‘ripped jeans’. Just as they make pronouncements about contemporary Indian women, they reimagine a woman from the past – the dancing girl (in this case) – in accordance with their definition of dignity.
The Art of Looking Away
This tendency fits in snugly into the BJP’s overarching philosophy of governance, where inconvenient realities are draped.
Take, for instance, the overall revamp of NCERT textbooks in which chapters of Mughal and medieval history have been dropped, and even science books have been robbed of the periodic table and Charles Darwin has been banished. While textbooks are being scrubbed and a Muslim past is being dumped, attempts are also being consistently made to demolish any evidence of their existence outside the books.
India’s skyline is filled with architecture from the Mughal period – from Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri, and Red Fort to lesser-known temples and monuments – that showcase India’s plurality and its rich heritage. What cannot be erased on paper is being pursued through disputing historic sites in court petitions aimed at an overhaul or renovation in the future. The recent Bhojshala-Kamal Maula Mosque complex verdict that declared a place where Muslims have offered prayers for years as a temple, is the latest in a legal sequence that began with the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992 and the Supreme Court's 2019 ruling handing the site to a Hindu temple trust. This has since expanded to contests over the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, the Shahi Idgah in Mathura, the Sambhal Jama Masjid, and audaciously even the Taj Mahal. That’s another kind of attempt to drape the country’s history in distortions, half-truths and lies.
The ambition of covering history with a new wallpaper is matched by the BJP government’s immense investment in blocking out of the public domain any information that can be used by citizens to hold it to account. The Right to Information Act, the tool through which ordinary Indians held power accountable, has been systematically hollowed out. The Digital Personal Data Protection Rules of 2025 removed the public interest test that had previously allowed citizens to access information about public bodies.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Modi has not addressed a single open press conference throughout his tenure. He has submitted to celebrities and embedded journalists who ask him how he eats a mango or applaud him for whatever he says. In Parliament, serious questions about the Rafale jet procurement were deflected and rebranded as threats to national security. Questions about Gautam Adani, Modi’s proximity to whom attracted sustained international scrutiny, including from a US federal indictment, were anti-national. A veil of secrecy has been the hallmark of this government’s functioning – from truth about Chinese incursions to the more recent killings of Indian sailors.
What the Veil Hides, What it Can’t
For a government that cannot answer a straight question, the veil occupies a central place. It drapes everything – history, textbooks, science, information, dissent and journalism – invisibilising them from the sight of common citizens. Critical outlets face tax raids, sedition charges, and jail. Those who remain friendly get access. Those who don’t get investigated. India dropped to 157th place on the Press Freedom Index. But citizens can’t see it. The veil of a noisy ecosystem of fake news and embedded media institutions is pulled over to hide that reality.
But veils eventually hide nothing. The Mohenjo-Daro statute episode is instructive. Pink dress or digital garbs, she stands as she is – with her naked truth – as a rebuke to every attempt to alter history, and present-day reality, and make it more palatable suited to a certain ideology. It reminds us: Truth will prevail.
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