The iconic bronze figurine popularly known as the ‘Dancing Girl’ of Mohenjo-daro has its bare torso covered in the latest NCERT arts textbook for Class 9, drawing attention to the way one of India’s most recognisable archaeological artefacts is being presented to students.The image appears in the opening chapter, “History of Arts”, of Madhurima, NCERT’s new Class 9 arts education textbook.In the version carried in the textbook, the torso of the figurine appears visually altered compared to the photographs of the original artefact, with shading used across the upper body that obscures anatomical details visible in the sculpture.Unlike the altered image, the ‘Dancing Girl’ in NCERT’s Class 6 Social Science textbook appears in a form closer to the original bronze sculpture.Michel Danino, who headed the textbook development committee for NCERT’s new Class 6 social science books, said he had been told that the Dancing Girl figurine was considered “not age-appropriate.”“This refers to our Class 6 social science textbook. The reason I was given was that the image of the Dancing Girl was not age-appropriate. Our team disagreed; we even checked with teachers of Class 6, and they told us there was never a problem with the Dancing Girl,” Danino told PTI.Danino said, “The notion that nudity is inappropriate is, in my opinion, an obsolete Victorian view. Yet, we speak of decolonising Indian education.”Reacting to the image used in the new Class 9 arts textbook, Danino said his first response was disbelief. “If the Dancing Girl cannot figure as she is, and with proper dimensions, in a chapter on Indian art, then we have a serious problem,” he said.Danino said the modification “misrepresents the original artefact.”“The modification misrepresents the original artefact just as the Church’s addition of a fig leaf to Michelangelo’s statue of David in the Middle Ages misrepresented that beautiful work of art,” he said.On the significance of the figurine, Danino said archaeologists have offered differing interpretations and that little is known about its context. He, however, noted that the same akimbo posture had been found on at least two potsherds from the Harappan site of Bhirrana in Rajasthan, suggesting that it held “a precise cultural value, probably an artistic one.”He also criticised the alteration of images of historical artefacts. “Unless this is clearly done to indicate the possible reconstruction of a partial artefact, altering such an image amounts to creating a fake artefact. It points to a serious lack of understanding of how historical artefacts are to be pictured,” Danino said.NCERT has not publicly commented on the variation in the representation of the figurine in the two textbooks.