There is a peculiar kind of identity crisis that only a 79-year-old nation can experience, especially when it spent those seven-odd decades trying desperately to erase any memory of its 5,000-year-old indigenous past.
Enter Sheema Kermani, noted Pakistani dancer, feminist-Marxist activist, and the latest architect of a rather imaginative historical heist. In a video recently making the rounds on social media, Kermani can be seen pitching a fascinating thesis: Odissi, the ancient Hindu classical dance form, could have originated in Pakistan, and based on it, they can form a ‘Pakistani cultural classical dance form.
The logic behind this grand claim relies on a single, heavily burdened artifact: the bronze ‘Dancing Girl’ figurine excavated from Mohenjo-daro. Because the ancient site sits within the geographic borders of modern-day Pakistan, the logic dictates that the entire lineage of temple dancing belongs to Islamabad.
It is a spectacular leap of creative gymnastics. One has to admire the sheer audacity required to claim a dance form deeply rooted in the Maharis (temple dancers) of Odisha, born from the spiritual womb of the Jagannath Temple, and sustained through centuries of Bhakti tradition, as a product of a state founded explicitly on the rejection of that very heritage.
The generosity of the Indian taxpayer
The irony of Kermani’s civilizational land-grab is that her own mastery of the art didn’t descend from the skies of Karachi. It was funded, quite literally, by the Indian state.
Kermani learned her craft by acquiring a scholarship from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR). She crossed the border, absorbed the rigorous vocabulary of Odissi and Bharatanatyam. To sit at the feet of Indian masters to learn an ancient sacred art, only to return across the border and declare it a sovereign Pakistani invention, is a masterclass in intellectual piracy.
But then, look at the lineage. Kermani happens to be the disciple of Leela Samson—the former director of the Kalakshetra Foundation and a known confidante of the Nehru-Gandhi family (having famously taught dance to Priyanka Gandhi). Samson’s tenure at Kalakshetra was mired in controversy, specifically regarding allegations of systematically stripping away traditional Hindu symbols and deities from the institution. The ideological apple, it seems, does not fall far from the tree. If the mentor could attempt to sanitize Sanatan iconography from the art within India, the student has simply taken the next logical step: outsourcing the entire art form to Pakistan.
An identity crisis on a secular budget
For decades, the standard state-sponsored historical narrative in Pakistan has been remarkably consistent: history begins in 711 AD with the arrival of Muhammad bin Qasim. Anything before that the temples of Taxila, the universities of the Indus Valley, the deep Vedic roots of the soil- was dismissed as Jahiliyyah (the age of ignorance) or “Hindu history” to be scrubbed from textbooks.
The elite narrative has always looked westward, fabricating ancestral lineages tied to Persia, Central Asia, or the sands of Arabia.
Yet, when the cultural ledger looks barren, a sudden urge arises to claim the ‘Dancing Girl’ of Mohenjo-daro. If Pakistan wishes to claim the cultural continuity of the Indus Valley Civilization, it comes with a rather heavy theological price tag. The artifacts of that era, be it the Pashupati seal or the terracotta figurines, reflect the earliest motifs of a proto-Sanatan culture. You cannot selectively adopt the bronze statue of a dancing woman while systematically demolishing the cultural and spiritual descendants of the people who made her.
Land is divided, the soul is not
When the subcontinent was carved up in 1947, real estate was divided. Boundaries were drawn through rivers, fields, and villages. Cyril Radcliffe could divide the land, but he could not partition the consciousness of an art form.
A piece of paper signed by British administrators, Nehru-Gandhi and Jinnah gave Pakistan a geography. It did not give them a history, nor did it grant them a copyright over the spiritual traditions of the land they left behind. Odissi is not a secular checklist of physical postures; it is an act of devotion, a visual rendering of sacred literature, and an expression of a philosophy that the Pakistani state has spent 79 years trying to actively suppress within its own borders.
If Pakistani activists wish to perform Odissi, they are welcome to do so with the respect the art demands. But trying to retroactively colonize the heritage of Lord Jagannath under the guise of an “indigenous Pakistani toolkit” is less of a cultural awakening and more of a desperate attempt to fill a historical void.
You inherited the soil of Mohenjo-daro, Appa. But the soul of the dance remains exactly where it was born: in the temples of Bharat.
