New Delhi: Delhi’s National Museum went into a tizzy when the replica of the Dancing Girl statue went missing this week. A CISF sub-inspector noticed it and raised the alarm. CISF officials began scanning visitors and reviewing CCTV footage. They found the statue in the possession of a 45-year-old man, identified as a professor at the Ashoka University in Sonipat, Haryana.
All this hullabaloo over not the Dancing Girl but her replica?
The Dancing Girl is a small bronze statuette about 10.5 cm high housed in the Harappan Gallery on the ground floor. The replica of the Dancing Girl is kept in the Anubhav Gallery for the differently abled along with 21 other items.
The Dancing Girl dates back to the Harappan/Indus Valley Civilisation and was excavated in 1926 at Mohenjo-Daro, which is now located in Sindh, Pakistan. After the Partition in 1947, it was kept in India as part of the post-Partition division of artefacts.
The National Museum’s website describes the “Indus Dancing Girl” as a “stylistically poised female figure performing a dance”.
The black-coloured statue depicts a nude girl wearing bangles and a necklace. This beautifully carved statuette holds great significance—not just for representing a specific time period and culture but also for the method, style, and material used in its creation. It provides insight into the advances made in art and metallurgy, as well as the hairstyles and ornaments worn during the ancient Harappan civilisation.
The girl stands in a pose with one hand resting on her hip and the other on her left lower thigh, with her left leg slightly bent. The statuette was made using the casting technique, which demonstrates the advanced metalworking skills of the ancient Harappan civilisation.
The Dancing Girl artefact is easily the Mona Lisa of the Indus Valley Civilisation and the National Museum. It is a tiny figurine enclosed in a glass box. It stands at the entrance of the Harappan gallery and visitors have to bend down and crane their necks to take a closer look. In the 1920s, some scholars even read African features into her face and her ornaments – the large earrings and hand rings – and headdress have been analysed in art history classes over time. There have been questions about who she really is – a dancing girl or a warrior queen?
Soon after the incident, the accused was arrested, and the statue was recovered. An FIR was lodged under various sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita at the Kartavya Path Police Station. The motive behind the theft remains unclear.
Previous incidents
This is not the first time the 4,500-year-old Dancing Girl statue has come into the limelight. In May 2023, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the International Museum Expo 2023 in New Delhi, where he unveiled a stylised, contemporary life-size clothed version — a 5-foot tall toy in the Channapatna style inspired by the bronze Dancing Girl of the Sindhu-Saraswati civilisation.
“The mascot is interpreted as a modern-day ‘dwarpaal’ or ‘door-guardian’ that ushers the audience into the experience of the International Museum Expo 2023,” read the PIB statement.
Through dance performances in Delhi, Kolkata, and Pune, choreographer Mandeep Raikhy’s contemporary dance piece “Hallucinations of an Artifact” takes inspiration from the prehistoric Dancing Girl of Mohenjodaro. The performances are interpretations of the dance form depicted by the statue and have attracted houseful shows.
The Dancing Girl also epitomises the ‘neighbour’s envy, owner’s pride’ slogan.
In 2016, a Pakistani lawyer even filed a petition in the Lahore High Court, asking his government to bring back the bronze statue from India. Javed Iqbal Jaffrey, the petitioner, claimed that the statue belongs to Pakistan and should be housed in the Lahore Museum.
“It was taken to India around 60 years ago at the request of the National Arts Council, Delhi, and was never brought back,” he said in a report published by Dawn.
In 2016, professor Thakur Prasad Verma from Banaras Hindu University claimed in an article in Itihaas – the Hindi journal of the Indian Council for Historical Research — that the ‘Dancing Girl’ of Mohenjodaro is identified as Parvati.
(Edited by Prashant)