Why is Bollywood Sita wearing a Hijab? The Saffron rebranding of Patriarchy as “Sanatani Ghunghat”

A storm is brewing on Indian social media, and at its eye is a piece of cloth. A recently circulated image from an upcoming mythological film depicts Sita, the heroine of the Ramayana, draped in a saffron ghunghat that covers her head and falls across her face. A bindi is carefully visible through the fabric. The caption on one viral post reads: "Our Sita, our Sanatani Ghunghat—the original Hijab." Within hours, the post had thousands of shares, and a familiar cultural battle had been reignited: the claim that the ghunghat is an ancient, indigenous Sanatani practice of modesty, distinct from—and superior to—the "foreign" hijab. But is this a celebration of heritage, or a cunning rebranding of patriarchy in saffron clothing?

The comparison is as seductive as it is dangerous. Both the hijab and the ghunghat are garments intended to conceal a woman's face and head from the male gaze. The justifications, curiously, run along parallel tracks. In certain interpretations of Islam, the veil is prescribed to protect women from the uncontrollable sexual urges of men who, it is implied, become "crazy" at the sight of any part of a woman's body. In the North Indian folk tradition of the ghunghat, the logic is eerily similar: the daughter-in-law must cover her face because the male relatives of her husband—particularly elder brothers-in-law and the father-in-law—would otherwise be overcome by lust. This is not "culture of modesty and beauty of Sanatan Dharma." It is the same patriarchal premise, dressed in a different language.

The Myth of Ancient Origins

The claim that the ghunghat is an ancient, timeless Sanatani practice collapses under the weight of historical evidence. A survey of North Indian temple sculpture from 1,500 years ago reveals a striking absence: you will not find a single image of Sita, or any goddess, wearing a face-covering ghunghat. In temples across Khajuraho, Mathura, and Deogarh, Sita is depicted with her head uncovered, her face visible, her ornaments and coiffure on display. Where a head covering appears, it is a chunari—a decorative scarf draped over the head, not a veil concealing the face.

In the temple traditions of Bengal, Odisha, and South India, the ghunghat is entirely absent. The renowned Sita Mai Temple in Haryana, an ancient structure with elaborate ornamentation, contains no iconographic evidence of facial veiling. Even the Delhi High Court, in a 2024 ruling, noted that references drawn from the Ramcharitmanas prove that Mata Sita did not wear a veil, and that referring to her as a pardanashin is a distortion of the text. In Valmiki's Ramayana, when Sita sets out for the forest, the poet expresses regret that a lady "who had so far not been seen even by the spirits of the sky" should now become an object of public gaze—but there is no mention of her veiling herself. The ghunghat as we know it—a cloth pulled across the face—is not Vedic. It is not Upanishadic. It is not Sanatani. It is medieval.

The Mughal Connection and the Question of Origins

If the ghunghat did not exist in ancient India, where did it come from? The most credible historical answer points to the medieval period, specifically the arrival of Islamic rule and the subsequent interaction between Rajput and Mughal households. The purdah system, as it is widely known, is believed to have reached India through Persia and become widespread during the Mughal era. Under Mughal rule, the practice of purdah spread to Hindu communities, particularly among the Rajputs, who were among the most dominant groups to adopt it. The fear of Mughal emperors—whose law allegedly dictated that any woman who caught the badshah's eye could be taken into the harem—created a powerful incentive for Rajput families to conceal their women.

But here lies a curious historical anomaly. The Mughal women themselves, the very source of this "foreign" practice, did not observe the same restrictions. Mughal women played polo, enjoyed horse riding, and went hunting. On many occasions, Rajput queens within the Mughal harem did not observe parda. The Mongol (Mughal) women rode horses and were not confined to the zenana in the same manner as their Rajput counterparts.

So where did the ghunghat come from? Was it, as some argue, an indigenous form of Hindi patriarchy that predated the Mughals and simply found a convenient justification in the political insecurity of the medieval period? The answer is layered. Ancient Indian women did wear turbans and head coverings as fashion—the ushnisha, the uttariya—but these were ornamental, not concealing. The avagunthana mentioned in Sanskrit plays was a thin veil worn to "hide and beautify" coiffures, not to erase a woman's presence. The transformation of a decorative headscarf into a compulsory face-covering was a medieval innovation, born of political anxiety and patriarchal control.

The WhatsApp History of the Hijab

Then there is the WhatsApp story—a piece of creative mythology that has achieved remarkable circulation. According to this tale, the hijab began when Surpanakha, the sister of Ravana, had her nose and ears cut off by Lakshman. Fleeing in shame, she covered her mutilated face. Her Rakshasa descendants, the story goes, carried this custom to Arabia, where they became the ancestors of Muslim women. They even kept Friday as a holy day because Shukra, the guru of the rakshasas, was associated with the planet Venus, which governs Friday.

This narrative has been repeated by political figures, including Raghuraj Singh, a BJP leader in Uttar Pradesh, who in 2020 claimed that Surpanakha "fled to hide in the Arab desert and used a burqa to hide her face" and that "in Mecca, a shivalinga was set up by Guru Shukracharya, from where the burqa tradition started." The story is historically baseless. It has no scriptural or archaeological support. But its popularity reveals something important: the deep-seated desire to externalize the "other" and to claim for one's own tradition a purity that does not exist. If the hijab can be traced to a demoness, then the ghunghat can be celebrated as the civilized, Sanatani alternative. Both claims are false.

The Saffron Rebranding of Patriarchy

What is happening today is not a revival of ancient tradition. It is a rebranding. The ghunghat, which for centuries has been a marker of a woman's subordination—her silence, her invisibility, her confinement to the domestic sphere—is being repackaged as a symbol of cultural pride. The saffron color is a deliberate choice. Saffron, the color of renunciation and devotion, has been appropriated for political purposes. The bindi, a symbol of auspiciousness and marital status, is left visible, as if to say: "This is not the erasure of the hijab; this is the beauty of our culture." But the function remains the same. The woman's face is covered. Her voice is muffled. Her presence is diminished.

The ghunghat is not an isolated garment. It is part of a system. In Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar—the so-called Hindi belt—the ghunghat is enforced through social pressure, through the threat of gossip, through the fear of family honor. Women who refuse to wear it are labeled shameless, modern, corrupted. They are told that their education, their employment, their independence are secondary to the preservation of culture.

The ghunghat separates men and women, gathering women into a separate sphere and reinforcing gender hierarchies. It functions as an indicator of marital status and social identity, historically reserved for elites but now widespread as a symbol of modesty and family honor. Behind the ghunghat, women's economic and social freedom is curtailed. The garment is not a choice. It is a command.

The False Choice of "Empowerment"

In recent years, some have attempted to reframe the ghunghat as a form of empowerment. During sanitation campaigns in rural Rajasthan, messages like "Maa, gharmein ghoonghat hai tera saathi, fir kyun shauchkhulemeinjaati" were used to encourage toilet construction. The argument was that if women cover their heads inside the house for modesty, they should not have to defecate in the open. Some officials defended this messaging as empowering, arguing that it used a familiar cultural idiom to address a critical health issue. But this is a dangerous sophistry.

The campaign may have built toilets, but it did not challenge the ghunghat. It reinforced the idea that a woman's dignity is tied to her concealment. True empowerment would be the freedom to choose not to wear the ghunghat—without social ostracism, without family pressure, without the accusation of betraying one's culture. As one commentator noted, the ghunghat, like the burqa, curtails a woman's rights, relegating her to the domestic sphere and repressing her economic and social freedom. The comparison between the two garments is not a matter of "one is oppressive, the other is our culture." Both are patriarchal. Both are tools of control.

The Question of Choice

The most insidious aspect of the saffron rebranding is the language of choice. "It is her choice to wear the ghunghat," the argument goes. "Feminism means respecting a woman's decision." But choice is meaningless without the freedom to refuse. If a woman who removes her ghunghat faces social boycott, family violence, or the loss of her marriage, then her "choice" is not a choice at all. It is a survival strategy. The same logic applies to the hijab. The Karnataka hijab controversy of 2022 exposed the hypocrisy of a state that banned the hijab in schools while simultaneously promoting the ghunghat as cultural heritage. If the hijab is a threat to secular education, then so is the ghunghat. If one is a symbol of oppression, so is the other. The distinction is political, not moral.

Conclusion: The Uncovered Sita

The Bollywood Sita in the saffron ghunghat is not a return to tradition. She is a political statement. She is the product of a cultural moment in which the past is being rewritten, in which medieval practices are being dressed in ancient robes, in which the subordination of women is being celebrated as the glory of Sanatan Dharma. But the Sita of the temples—the Sita of Khajuraho, of Mathura, of the Chola bronzes—is not veiled. She is fierce. She is visible. She is free. The real Sanatani tradition is not the ghunghat. It is the woman who refuses to wear it. The question is not whether the ghunghat is "better" than the hijab. The question is why, in the year 2026, we are still debating whether a woman's face should be seen at all.