As part of the
increasing give and take exchanges taking place these days between India and
Pakistan, the latter has demanded
that the Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro be returned to it.
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| Dancing Girl |
Dancing Girl is a bronze statuette excavated from
the Mohenjo-Daro site before India and Pakistan became two separate
nations. It is just 10.5 centimetres
high and is about 5000 years old. The pubescent
girl is stark naked except for a whole array of bangles and a necklace. The posture looks like that of a dancer
though she might have been confidently making a statement to her audience. She holds her chin up and looks smug. In short, she is a total contrast to what today’s
Pakistan expects of a young girl.
Let us visit
her briefly at the National Museum in New Delhi to ask her what she thinks of
her threatened extradition.
“Oh, I think
it would be horrible,” says DG losing all the panache that has graced her face
for millennia. “What will they do to me
there? Will they throw a purdah over
me? Will they lock me up in some
closet? They might even blast me to
smithereens.” DG shivers.
You understand
her feelings and emotions. She belonged
to a culture in which people lived together as a cooperative community the kind
of which cannot exist even in the most fantastic of human dreams today. Mohenjo-Daro.
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| Mohenjo-Daro |
Mohenjo-Daro
was a dream. You can read it in the
radiance of her demeanour. Mohenjo-Daro
was a city of excellence built almost five millennia ago. The Citadel had a large residential structure
which could house about 5000 people. It
had two huge assembly halls and a number of public baths. Then there was the Lower City. There was the market. An excellent drainage system. There was love among the people. Women were not discriminated against. It was
a civilisation that was superior to most that came later.
“Okay, I can’t
ever go back to that, I know,” says DG plaintively. “But why would I go to a place that is
absolutely opposite to all that I ever lived in?”
You know you
have no answers to her questions. You
know you live in a world that is strange even to you. You don’t understand things like nationalism
and jihadism. You don’t understand why
people create wonderful things only to bombard them in the name of some
oddities allegedly living along with aliens up there somewhere.
You bid adieu
to DG. You wish her good luck. You know she cannot shed tears. Thousands of years of existence is certain to
make you hard.
I wonder whether they have any good record of preservation. I never heard of it.
ReplyDeleteNor have I. This present demand is just another retaliation.
DeleteI like the way you made DG converse and made her put her point candidly.
ReplyDeleteIf DG had life and is she could talk... we would have learnt a lot about the pathetic drawbacks of our civilisation in comparison to hers, at least.
DeleteEven if she could shed tears, would they be of any value to anyone? Where women of flesh and blood suffer, what hope can be for a lifeless piece of art?
ReplyDeleteThere's no hope, Sunaina. Not only for her but even for others in that country.
DeleteVery informative post . I was unknown about this grand piece of history but when Pakistan court ask about it then me too become curious to know about it and here is your post to tell all the things related to it . It is in National Museum , it is very near to me.
ReplyDeleteI visited the National Museum a number of times along with students and friends. It's a place worth visiting especially since you are near it.
DeleteHer nonchalant pose in the dignity of nudity says it loud and clear that she will be an alien there:(
ReplyDeleteI wonder who is not an alien there :(
Delete