NCERT to restore Mohenjo-daro Dancing Girl image after backlash

NCERT has moved to restore the original image of the Mohenjo-daro Dancing Girl after its altered version, with the bronze figurine’s torso darkened in a new Class 9 Arts Education textbook, triggered sharp criticism from historians and educationists. The dispute quickly became larger than one illustration: it exposed a deeper struggle over who gets to define cultural heritage for schoolchildren, and how far textbook makers should go in filtering history for perceived propriety.

The image appeared in the opening chapter, History of Arts, where the Dancing Girl, one of the best-known artefacts from the Indus Valley Civilisation, had been shown with her naked torso covered up. NCERT said it would restore the original image immediately in the digital version and in future print editions. The Education Ministry also sought an explanation from NCERT after the issue was raised, underscoring how quickly a classroom edit became a matter of official scrutiny in New Delhi.

Historians and educationists argued that the change distorted a historic artefact rather than making it more understandable to students. The Dancing Girl, the bronze figurine from Mohenjo-daro, has long been used in NCERT textbooks, and The Indian Express reported that it had appeared for at least 25 years, including during previous NDA governments, without its torso being obscured. That history made the new shading appear to critics not as a routine update, but as a sharp break from how the object had previously been taught.

The backlash also revived a familiar argument in Indian education policy: whether textbook publishers should alter ancient images to fit what officials describe as age-appropriate presentation, or whether such changes amount to prudish distortion that sanitises the past. For critics, the issue was not the modesty of a single figure but the integrity of the classroom record. For NCERT, the reversal acknowledged that a textbook meant to teach arts and history had crossed into rewriting the visual evidence students were meant to see.