She survived social mores for about 4,500 years—only to be clothed up in the cotton-wool of present-day prudery in 2026. The chutzpah of the tiny bronze figurine of a girl with one hand on her hip—popularly called the ‘Dancing girl’ of Mohenjodaro—has inspired poets as diverse as Faiz Ahmed Faiz and R Balachandra. Mandeep Raikhy even imparted ‘life’ to her through animation at the latest edition of the Kochi Muziris Biennale. But NCERT has now masked her up for a new Class 9 textbook. The national curriculum setter seems to be in denial of the lakhs of brilliantly-carved unclothed figures in temples across the country. What we need instead is a game like Anthropeum, which popularises history with online quizzes on objects from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
