When I was nine, my cousin Bikash danced at a Tihar gathering. It was Deusi-Bhailo night. The courtyard was alive with drums, and he moved the way boys are not supposed to move: loose-limbed, eyes closed, completely surrendered to the beat. The room applauded for about ten seconds. Then an uncle laughed and said, “Look at him. He’s become a girl.”
Bikash stopped. He did not dance in public again for twenty years.
That same night, we had lit lamps before an image of Shiva as Nataraja, the Lord of Dance, one foot raised, one arm sweeping through fire, the whole universe turning in his steps. No one saw the contradiction. We rarely do.
The gods have already answered us
In the Hindu imagination that shapes so much of Nepal and South Asia, the cosmos is not held together by a stern man with a sword. It is danced into being. Shiva’s tandava creates, sustains and dissolves the universe. If dance were weak or feminine, the universe would be in very poor hands.
And what of war? One of the fiercest warriors in our pantheon is not a god but a goddess. Kali, black as the night sky, tongue out, garlanded with skulls, stands over the battlefield she has conquered. When the demon armies grew too powerful for the gods, it was Durga who rode out to defeat Mahishasura, the very story we retell every Dashain. The gods, despite all their weapons, had to call upon her.
Nepal says the quiet part out loud
Consider how the Gurkhas go to battle. The cry that has accompanied Nepali soldiers through history is “Jai Mahakali, Ayo Gorkhali.” Victory to the great goddess. Even one of our most celebrated masculine traditions of warfare begins with the name of a woman.
Consider Dashain itself. Soldiers have traditionally worshipped their weapons during the festival. Entire households honour Durga through nine nights of her battle. In the Kathmandu Valley, devotees climb to Dakshinkali to worship a goddess of terrifying power. In Bhaktapur, the Navadurga dances are performed by men who, through masks, paint and ritual, are believed to embody the goddesses themselves, channeling their divine feminine fury.
In the Newar Buddhist tradition, Charya Nritya is a sacred dance practised by priests as meditation, worship and a path towards enlightenment. These traditions remind us that dance, devotion and spiritual expression have never belonged exclusively to one gender.
Our traditions never confused grace with weakness or strength with masculinity. We did.
So where did the rule come from?
Somewhere between the temple and the living room, the story was rewritten. Dance was taken from the priest and the god and handed to the girl, to be performed at weddings, scrutinised and eventually shamed. Women who danced in public were labelled “that kind of woman”. Those who danced for a living were pushed to the margins of respectability. Meanwhile, boys were taught that the body was meant for hardness and that any expression of softness was a stain to be hidden.
War was rewritten, too. The goddess who fought was kept on the altar and removed from everyday life. Women could be worshipped as Shakti and still be told to remain behind the kitchen door. We bowed to Durga while teaching our daughters never to raise their voices.
This was never simply about faith. It was about power. It is far easier to control a woman if she is expected to be decorative, and far easier to control a man if he is expected to be permanently armoured.
And yet, women have always fought
During Nepal’s decade-long armed conflict, women made up a significant share of the combatants. Many were young women and girls from villages who left behind early marriages and walked into the hills, carrying rifles where their mothers might once have carried sickles. We can debate the politics and consequences of that war. But we cannot pretend that the goddess was only a metaphor.
Today, Nepali women fly planes, command police units, climb Everest and contest elections. Yet many are still asked, in one form or another, whether they are “too much”. And every young man who has quietly stopped dancing has been asked the opposite question: whether he is “enough”.
What we owe the gods, and each other
If we truly believe in Nataraja, every boy should be free to dance without being laughed at. If we truly believe in Kali, every girl should be free to express anger without being labelled a problem. Ardhanarishvara, Shiva in his half-male, half-female form, embodies both masculine and feminine energies without apology. Our own traditions offer us a mirror, yet we keep looking away.
I think often about Bikash. Last Tihar, at a family gathering, he stood up when the drums started. His hair had turned a little grey. He closed his eyes and danced. His eleven-year-old daughter joined him, fierce and fearless, her hands slicing through the air like blades.
The room fell quiet. Then, slowly, it began to applaud. Nobody laughed. I like to think that somewhere, Nataraja was smiling, and Kali, for once, was resting.
