- It’s intriguing all the time, annoying most of the time, and irrational sometimes to put on the garb of moral police by assuming the mantle of upholding the culture and tradition of our rich heritage.There are many here. As Indians, we are extremely proud of the rich legacy bestowed upon us by our ancestors, which generations have diligently carried forward since time immemorial. While we bask in the glories of the past, we are also embracing the latest technological advances being ushered in through some of the most cutting-edge inventions of all time. However, the moot point to ponder over here is whether our thought processes continue to be anachronistic, misogynistic, and parochial on certain matters, especially concerning women-centric artefacts. Yes, of course.
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PC: EduAdvice
- Our society does not need to be hypocritical concerning arts, artefacts, and historical remnants of yore. Mind you, not for nothing, we are the most populous nation in the world by mere coincidence or by embracing a conservative approach. We can be open-minded and welcoming rather than display prudish behaviour towards women-centric sculptures/artefacts, and sex in general. In recent times, the Dancing Girl from the time of Mohenjo-daro was in the news. Indeed, the Dancing Girl doesn’t need a modesty shawl, and teenagers don’t need Mohenjo-daro photoshopped either. Note that she’s about 4500 years old. But age hasn’t withered her, norcustom staled her infinite variety. She stands the test of time even after all these centuries.
PC: Business Today
- The thing that she has in common with the much more youthful Mona Lisa is that when we meet her face to face, we’re wholly mesmerized. By her large eyes, flat nose, bodily vigour, trademark bangles, her spell is all the more remarkable because the Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-daro is only about four bronze inches tall. This suggests an out-of-time metallurgical mastery. It’s a reminder that we know so little about our cool Harappan ancestors. We haven’t even cracked their script. But the artefacts they’ve left behind are central to understanding them. This is why Dancing Girl’s been in our school textbooks for decades. It’s how education instils civilizational pride. But suddenly, NCERT censored her image, smudging the bare torso, in an art textbook for Class 9.
PC: ऑपइंडिया – OpIndia
- The regressiveness and irony were acute. Dancing Girl embodies a teenager perfectly confident in herself and the world, totally chill in her dress of bangles and a cowry necklace. But today’s teenagers will get corrupted by her truth, the new curriculum gatekeepers claimed bombastically. Too many of them are hellbent on outdoing Victorian colonialists, who tagged so much of our inheritance as embarrassing or illicit. Every person has a body. If schools are pretending otherwise, even in Class 9, that really sucks for students bang in the middle of a sex hormones spurt. Expectedly, they will giggle and squirm at nakedness. But this is exactly where art can be super educational. It’s good that public outcry forced NCERT to reverse its photo-edit. Dancing Girl returns, bangles, confidence, and all, exactly as she has stood for millennia.
