"Dirty and Naked": The Shirtless Protest That Hijacked Delhi’s AI Summit
When the Shirts Came Off at India's Biggest AI Summit
The Stage Was Set for India's Global Moment
Imagine the scene: Bharat Mandapam. Mid-February. The air conditioning is humming, the Wi-Fi is flawless, and the venue is packed with the kind of tech billionaires who usually only leave Silicon Valley for Davos.
We're talking OpenAI's Sam Altman, Google's Sundar Pichai, plus delegates from over 80 countries. The India AI Impact Summit 2026 was supposed to be New Delhi's massive global flex — a highly choreographed moment to prove the Global South was ready to steer the future of artificial intelligence.
And then the shirts came off.
What Actually Happened Inside Hall 5
Right in the middle of Hall 5, a crew of Indian Youth Congress (IYC) activists — who had somehow slipped through the QR-code security net — just started stripping.
Outer layers hit the floor to reveal white tees plastered with the faces of Narendra Modi and Donald Trump. The slogans were loud and messy.
- **"PM is compromised"**
- Hits against the new India-US trade deal
- References to the **"Epstein Files"**
Then those shirts came off too. You had half-naked guys waving their clothes around and screaming anti-government slogans while global tech royalty probably wondered if this was some avant-garde start-up pitch.
Security swarmed. It got physical fast. Cops dragged four of them out on the spot — activists like Krishna Hari from Bihar and Ajay Kumar from UP — and later hunted down more all the way in Gwalior.
PM Modi Goes Nuclear
The political whiplash was instant. PM Modi didn't just brush it off — he went nuclear.
Up in Meerut on Sunday, inaugurating a metro rail line, he practically tore the microphone off the stand. He called it "gandi aur nangi" — dirty and naked — politics.
"The country knows you are already naked — so why did you feel the need to take off your clothes in front of foreign guests?"
Modi branded the opposition leaders as "sarfira" (crazy) and "belagaam" (reckless) — accusing them of being so consumed by jealousy over India's rising global status that they would happily humiliate the country on the world stage just to go viral.
The Legal System Is Treating This Like Treason
If the IYC thought they were catching a standard public nuisance charge, they were dreaming.
Delhi Police hauled them into Patiala House Court and spun a wild narrative. The cops told the judge this wasn't just a protest — it was a deeply funded, hyper-coordinated conspiracy explicitly modelled after the violent Gen Z uprisings that recently flipped Nepal upside down. They are currently hunting down the money trail to see who paid for those printed shirts.
The judge bought it.
- **Bail denied**
- **5 days police custody**
- Magistrate called it a **"blatant assault on public order"**
- Court said it actively **"endangered the Republic's image"**
Congress Is Stuck Doubling Down
Congress is defending the workers as youth soldiers exposing the "cracks in the walls" of Modi's India — pivoting the conversation to youth unemployment and shady trade deals.
But it's a tough sell when even your own political allies are groaning publicly.
"You don't air the country's dirty laundry in front of international guests." — Akhilesh Yadav, Samajwadi Party
Even INDIA bloc allies distanced themselves — a rare and deeply embarrassing split for the opposition at the worst possible moment.
The Ultimate Paradox
A summit meant to finalise the "New Delhi Declaration on AI Impact" will instead be remembered for a shirtless brawl.
India is racing to write the rules for the future of machines — but the messy, loud, and incredibly raw reality of its human politics keeps stealing the microphone.
The country that wants to lead the world on artificial intelligence couldn't stop a group of half-naked protesters from making international headlines — and that says everything.
