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Dancing Girl and Pakistan


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.  

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.

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.

  
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Comments

  1. AmitOctober 13, 2016 at 7:15 PM

    I wonder whether they have any good record of preservation. I never heard of it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 13, 2016 at 8:02 PM

      Nor have I. This present demand is just another retaliation.

      Delete
  2. SaketOctober 13, 2016 at 10:19 PM

    I like the way you made DG converse and made her put her point candidly.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 14, 2016 at 6:02 PM

      If 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.

      Delete
  3. sunaina sharmaOctober 14, 2016 at 3:05 AM

    Even 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?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 14, 2016 at 6:02 PM

      There's no hope, Sunaina. Not only for her but even for others in that country.

      Delete
  4. Yogi SaraswatOctober 14, 2016 at 10:17 AM

    Very 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.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 14, 2016 at 6:04 PM

      I 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.

      Delete
  5. Amit AgarwalOctober 14, 2016 at 1:50 PM

    Her nonchalant pose in the dignity of nudity says it loud and clear that she will be an alien there:(

    ReplyDelete

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