THE “covered-up” image of an artefact has been withdrawn from an Indian school textbook after it sparked a massive backlash from historians and educationists, BBC News reported.

The bronze sculpture — known as the Dancing Girl — shows a girl standing with one hand on her hip and is one of the most recognisable artefacts from the Indus Valley civilisation.

The sculpture was discovered at Mohenjo Daro — one of the largest settlements of the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation in present-day Pakistan.

But in a newly released grade nine textbook, the figurine’s torso was covered with dark shading, hiding its anatomical features.

After it created an uproar, officials said that the original image has been restored in the digital version of the book and that new print editions would also carry the unedited photo of the bronze sculpture.

After news broke of the inclusion of the modified image, historians had accused the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) — which drafted the textbook — of disfiguring the iconic artefact.

NCERT director Dinesh Saklani told reporters that the modified image would be withdrawn from the textbook.

A chapter on the Indus Valley has been a staple in Indian school curriculum, and though the Dancing Girl sculpture has appeared in textbooks for decades — including in earlier versions of NCERT textbooks — its torso has never been censored in any way.

An editorial in the Indian Express, which first broke the news, criticised the modification of the artefact, saying:

“The Dancing Girl has been significant not because it conforms to a blindfolded standard of modesty but because it embodies poise, confidence and unmistakable presence. If the task of education is to equip young people to engage with the world as it is, then NCERT would do better to trust both students, and women — both contemporary and millennia old — with a little more agency.”

Published in Dawn, June 17th, 2026