Following strong criticism from educationists and historians for its blurring of an image of a figurine of a nude young woman in its history textbook for Class IX students, India’s National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has been forced to back down. It has agreed to replace the altered image of the iconic figurine with its “original version.”
“The correction is being implemented immediately in the digital version of the textbook, while the revised print editions will carry the original version of the image,” NCERT Director Dinesh Saklani told news agency ANI. An autonomous body under the federal education ministry, NCERT oversees curriculum changes and textbook content for children taking exams under the government-run CBSE system.
At the center of the controversy is an image of a four-inch bronze figurine, one of the most widely recognized and acclaimed artifacts of the Indus Valley Civilization, which dates back to circa 2600-1900 BCE.
The figurine, known as the “Dancing Girl,” was discovered at Mohenjo-daro in present-day Pakistan in the early 20th century. The sculpture depicts a young woman with her right hand resting on the back of her hips, her chin slightly tilted upwards, and her legs slightly bent at the knees. The figurine has a completely bare torso. Her hair is tied in a bun, and she wears bangles and a necklace. Her pose is striking for the confidence she exudes.
For decades, school history textbooks have carried pictures of the Dancing Girl figurine, which stands today in the National Museum in New Delhi, a proud symbol of an ancient civilization’s artistic prowess. Most artifacts of the Indus Valley Civilization found so far were made of terra cotta; the Dancing Girl figurine is of bronze and indicates the civilization’s mastery over metallurgy. The figurine provided students with insight into the social life of the Indus Valley people, their adornments, and aesthetics.
But in a recently released NCERT Class IX textbook, the figurine’s torso has been shaded over, hiding its anatomical features.
So why did NCERT officials decide to give images of the Dancing Girl a makeover? The fact that she is nude seems to have rattled them, prompting them to shade the image of her bare torso to make it appear like she is clothed.
India was never a puritanical society. Temples are replete with sculptures of gods and goddesses that are naked but adorned with jewelry. The Khajuraho group of temples, built between 900 AD and 1130 AD, is adorned with erotic sculptures.
It was during British colonial rule that Victorian morality and prudishness crept into society in a big way.
Under the rule of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is socially conservative and deeply patriarchal, even misogynistic in its outlook and policies, India has regressed in multiple ways, especially since 2014, when the BJP under Narendra Modi swept to power nationally. The Modi government has turned NCERT and other school boards in states under BJP rule into tools to further its Hindutva agenda. NCERT, in particular, has been working assiduously to change curricula, rewrite history and other social science textbooks to further its Hindutva project.
While Saklani told NDTV that there was “no specific reason behind masking the torso” of the Dancing Girl’s image in NCERT textbooks, it does seem that NCERT’s moral police either themselves believed that an image of a nude woman was inappropriate for school students or acted to please their masters in the Sangh Parivar, the family of Hindutva outfits of which the BJP is a part.
This is not the first time that the Dancing Girl has been clothed by India’s patriarchs.
On May 18, 2023, Modi unveiled a statue inspired by the Dancing Girl. It was to be the “door guardian” to the International Museum Expo that was being held in New Delhi. The statue was not a replica of the original figurine but a “stylized… contemporized… life size” version.
Significantly, this avatar of the Dancing Girl was pink-skinned and clothed.
The Dancing Girl figurine evoked unease in Pakistan as well. At the time of Partition, when the division of assets between India and Pakistan was being negotiated, officials squabbled over the Harappan artifacts too. When they finally agreed on a 50:50 division of the Harappan artifacts, Pakistan rejected the Dancing Girl in favor of a figurine of a male priest-king. In an academic paper titled “Sahib’s Nautch Girl: Colonial archaeology and the identity formation of a bronze girl statue from Mohenjodaro,” Punjab University historian Ashish Kumar wrote: “The Pakistani officials chose the priest king to avoid any backlash at home that a figure of a naked teenager could have invoked from religious quarters” at home. “The ‘nudity’ of a teenager girl,” he argued, “impacted the decision of the Pakistani officials, who considered its sexuality as a threat to their moral beliefs.”
Importantly, Indian historians have contested the labeling of the figurine as the Dancing Girl. In “A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India,” historian Upinder Singh wrote: “The dancing girl may not have been dancing at all, and even if she was, she may not represent a professional dancer.”
As it turns out, it was British colonial archaeologist John Marshall who read the figurine as that of a “nautch girl” (literally a dancing girl; during colonial rule nautch girls came to be associated with prostitution). And that name stuck.
Nobody, it seems, is at ease with a confident young woman.
This time around, the four-inch figurine of the Indus Valley woman has won the battle against puritans seeking to body shame her. But how long before the puritans return to wage war on her or other nude sculptures? How far will they go? Will they take their battle to Hindu temples?