A woman in a red dress dances on a table in a bar. Behind her are shelves of liquor bottles. Men watch her. The caption reads: “Lusiana, Italy. Circa-1970s.”
Nobody is named. Nobody needs to be.
Lusiana is Sonia Gandhi's birthplace. The AI-generated image, recently posted by the BJP's Telangana unit on X, leaves little doubt about whom the viewer is expected to think of.
A few weeks earlier, another photograph was circulating on X, supposedly showing a young Sonia Gandhi dancing in a bar. Fact-checkers traced it to go-go dancers at a Sydney hotel in 1967. None of them was Sonia Gandhi.
The photograph was fake. The insinuation was familiar.
That an official political party handle sees nothing unacceptable in circulating such an image tells us how low the bar for public decorum and decency has fallen.
For years, Sonia Gandhi has been called a “bar dancer” on social media, sometimes accompanied by photographs of other women passed off as hers. Now AI has removed even the inconvenience of finding a photograph to misrepresent. We can simply manufacture one.
Why does political disagreement with a woman so easily become an attack on her body, sexuality, clothes, marriage, appearance or character?
There is enough in Sonia Gandhi's long political career to criticise. Her leadership of the Congress, the influence she wielded, dynastic politics and decisions made during the UPA years are all legitimate subjects for scrutiny.
But what exactly does an imaginary woman dancing in an Italian bar have to do with any of them?
Sonia Gandhi is hardly an exception.
In 2016, BJP's Uttar Pradesh vice-president Dayashankar Singh compared Mayawati to a sex worker while criticising the BSP's distribution of election tickets. The BJP removed him from his party post. But what is revealing is the choice of insult. A charge about political transactions became sexual degradation.
In 2015, Union minister Giriraj Singh wondered whether Congress would have accepted Sonia Gandhi's leadership had Rajiv Gandhi married a Nigerian woman who was not white-skinned.
During the 2025 Delhi election campaign, BJP leader Ramesh Bidhuri promised to make roads in Kalkaji as smooth as Priyanka Gandhi's cheeks.
It wasn't even an original idea. Years earlier, Lalu Prasad Yadav had famously promised to make Bihar's roads as smooth as Hema Malini's cheeks. The metaphor has since resurfaced among politicians of different parties.
Misogyny is remarkably secular and politically promiscuous. It crosses party lines with ease.
A male politician may be called corrupt, incompetent, dishonest, authoritarian or stupid. A woman can be called all those things too. But there is an additional arsenal available when the target is a woman: her face, clothes, relationships, sexual history, real or invented, marital status, age and “character”.
The “bar dancer” insult has another troubling dimension. It works only if we accept that a woman who dances in a bar is inherently contemptible.
Even if Sonia Gandhi had once worked as a dancer, which these viral images certainly do not establish, why should that be a source of shame or political disqualification? When “bar dancer” becomes an abuse, the contempt goes beyond Sonia Gandhi. It passes judgement on every woman whose work does not fit our notions of female respectability.
But what happens when women themselves use abusive language?
In 2023, TMC MP Mahua Moitra used an expletive during a heated exchange in Parliament. The word was expunged and there were demands for an apology. BJP MP Hema Malini said Moitra should “control her tongue”.
Moitra shot back: “Do I need to be a man to give it back as good as it gets?”
I don't particularly want Mahua Moitra using expletives in Parliament. But I don't want male MPs doing it either.
The standard we need is civility, not feminine decorum.
I thought of this recently when Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke about young protesters at Jantar Mantar using abusive language against him and his late mother. The abuse was unacceptable. What seemed to shock him particularly, however, was that young women were among those using such language.
But why should we be more shocked when a girl uses foul language than when a boy does?
Perhaps many of us share that reaction without even noticing it. We expect girls to be more restrained, polite and well behaved. Women are still expected to be the custodians of civility.
Instead of asking how young women can speak like this, shouldn't we also ask what kind of public culture young people, boys and girls, are growing up in?
They see political leaders calling opponents names, television debates rewarding aggression, and influencers discovering that outrage brings engagement. They grow up on popular culture where films, songs and music videos often objectify women, romanticise stalking and persistent pursuit, and reinforce attitudes that feed misogyny and rape culture. Social media turns humiliation into entertainment. And hardened political loyalties allow us to condemn abuse when it targets “our” side and laugh when something similar happens to the other side.
Those who shape popular culture and public discourse cannot pretend they have no influence on what gradually comes to be regarded as normal.
We cannot normalise misogyny when it is politically convenient and then be shocked when young people reproduce it. We cannot circulate humiliating images of women and then lecture the next generation about sanskar. Nor can we condemn abusive language only when the person being abused belongs to our side. Either we believe some lines should not be crossed, or we don't.
AI now gives this already troubling culture a frightening new weapon.
We no longer need merely to allege that a woman did something. We can manufacture a convincing image showing her doing it. And images have a stubborn afterlife. The fact-check travels slowly. The picture travels instantly. Years later someone encounters it and says, “But I have seen the photograph.”
Nor is this only about famous women.
The same technology that can place Sonia Gandhi in an imaginary bar can place a college student, journalist, activist, teacher or teenage girl in a sexually suggestive photograph or video she never posed for.
A girl's face can be attached to a body that isn't hers. A sexual history can be invented for her. A fake image can travel through WhatsApp groups, Instagram and X before she even knows it exists. By the time someone establishes that it is fabricated, the damage may already have been done.
If political leaders, party handles, filmmakers, musicians, influencers and opinion makers do not draw a line at abuse and misogyny, should we be surprised when young people fail to recognise that line?
Our outrage cannot depend on political affiliation either. Abusing Narendra Modi's mother is wrong. Sexualising Sonia Gandhi is equally wrong. So are sexual slurs and comments about women's bodies, irrespective of who makes them or which party they belong to.
Criticise politicians fiercely. Question their decisions. Expose hypocrisy, corruption and incompetence. Nobody in public life, male or female, should expect protection from political scrutiny.
But surely we can disagree without abuse, and disagree with a woman without sexualising her, inventing a past for her or turning her body into a punchline.
Decorum and decency may sound like old-fashioned words today. Perhaps it is time we reclaimed them.
Because when technology can manufacture a woman's most humiliating moment without her ever having lived it, this is no longer just about political civility.
It is about whether any woman can feel safe in the public square anymore.
Sharada AL is the Director of Population First, a non-profit organisation focused on population and gender issues. She is the founder of Laadli, a premier advocacy initiative and media campaign designed to promote gender sensitivity in journalism and advertising. Views expressed are the author's own.