The World Before Her - Documentary

[Adelaide]

I just watched the documentary "The World Before Her" by Nisha Pahuja and was absolutely shocked with the India being portrayed. To give a brief summary, the documentary follows the 30 day training regimen for the Miss India contestants, which includes such procedures as Botox, skin whitening, etc.. The women in the contest see this as their only way to make a living and to be equal to men, because the beauty industry is one of the few industries where women can have as much power as men in India.

Then the documentary switches to covering young girls in a Durga Vahini training camp, which is the women's wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad, (extremist/fundamentalist Hindus who have committed terrorist attacks and view Christians, Muslims and westernization as their enemy). The women are put through physical combat training and sit through lectures on how evil everything other than Hinduism is; women are to be married by age 18 or they lose what little value they have. They are taught to hate and kill anyone who does not follow this strict version of Hinduism; Mahatma Ghandi is seen as a fool for advocating non-violence.

The documentary cites statistics about how 250,000 females are aborted every year - there is no statistic for the amount of female babies killed after birth. One of the contestants in the Miss India contest was almost killed because her father wanted a son; her mother subsequently left him. Another family featured follows the strict Hinduism; the father and daughter laughed and reminisced about the time he burned her with a hot rod for lying about doing her grade 7 school work.

I'm just absolutely shocked as a female that this kind of behaviour is occurring in the world. Intellectually, I knew that these situations existed but to see it in this documentary was absolutely shocking.

I highly suggest seeing this documentary. Suddenly, the recent gang rapes in India are making a whole lot more sense to me. I can't even fathom living in that kind of environment.

[countryboy]

Every Indian I've ever met was a flaming liberal. Connection?

[Captain Obvious]

Every Indian I've ever met was a flaming liberal. Connection?

You don't get out much.

[countryboy]

You don't get out much.

Do you know any conservative Indians?

[Captain Obvious]

Do you know any conservative Indians?

Yes I do.

[KC]

Do you know any conservative Indians?

I used to know a very nice family of conservative, evangelical Indian Americans.

Also, let's not forget about Dinesh.

Attachment 1417

He served in the Reagan admin right out of Dartmouth. He's written a pretty impressive group of books since. I'm disappointed that he's spent all of his energy capitalizing on anti Obama sentiment though. What a waste of intellect.

[KC]

I just watched the documentary "The World Before Her" by Nisha Pahuja and was absolutely shocked with the India being portrayed. To give a brief summary, the documentary follows the 30 day training regimen for the Miss India contestants, which includes such procedures as Botox, skin whitening, etc.. The women in the contest see this as their only way to make a living and to be equal to men, because the beauty industry is one of the few industries where women can have as much power as men in India.

Then the documentary switches to covering young girls in a Durga Vahini training camp, which is the women's wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad, (extremist/fundamentalist Hindus who have committed terrorist attacks and view Christians, Muslims and westernization as their enemy). The women are put through physical combat training and sit through lectures on how evil everything other than Hinduism is; women are to be married by age 18 or they lose what little value they have. They are taught to hate and kill anyone who does not follow this strict version of Hinduism; Mahatma Ghandi is seen as a fool for advocating non-violence.

The documentary cites statistics about how 250,000 females are aborted every year - there is no statistic for the amount of female babies killed after birth. One of the contestants in the Miss India contest was almost killed because her father wanted a son; her mother subsequently left him. Another family featured follows the strict Hinduism; the father and daughter laughed and reminisced about the time he burned her with a hot rod for lying about doing her grade 7 school work.

I'm just absolutely shocked as a female that this kind of behaviour is occurring in the world. Intellectually, I knew that these situations existed but to see it in this documentary was absolutely shocking.

I highly suggest seeing this documentary. Suddenly, the recent gang rapes in India are making a whole lot more sense to me. I can't even fathom living in that kind of environment.

It's a sad consequence of the US exporting our ideas of beauty to the rest of the world without exporting our sense of equality of opportunity.

[Adelaide]

I used to know a very nice family of conservative, evangelical Indian Americans.

Also, let's not forget about Dinesh.

Attachment 1417

He served in the Reagan admin right out of Dartmouth. He's written a pretty impressive group of books since. I'm disappointed that he's spent all of his energy capitalizing on anti Obama sentiment though. What a waste of intellect.

There are very modern Indians and Hindus - they tend to live in the larger cities in India or they live in other countries. That doesn't mean they're Liberal, but they have more modern ideas on the roles of men and women (for example). Of course some will be "flaming Liberals" - no group of people are black and white in terms of beliefs.

The documentary was about women in India, with India being one of the worst countries in the world for women's rights.

[Adelaide]

It's a sad consequence of the US exporting our ideas of beauty to the rest of the world without exporting our sense of equality of opportunity.

That was a very interesting aspect of the Miss India portion of the documentary. You're to look more caucasian, act more American and speak English. Yet at the same time, the bikini portion of the competition had to be held behind closed doors because the ultra fundamentalists had threatened the organization and contestants with violence for the "vulgarity" of bikinis/showing that much skin.

[Carygrant]

Violence Stats show India as one of the least violent nations in the world . We all know that is nonsense and at it its simplest it just reflects the low report rate for violent incidents and a political climate where reported incidents are ignored , both in terms of follow up or registering them officially .
Violence Stats for India are therefore suspect ( nonsense actually ) and it makes no sense to compare with supposed equivalent results from other countries .
At the other end of the spectrum is Sweden , which if literal Stats were to be believed , are a terribly violent people with only countries like Somalia and the Democratic Congo worse . Of course , this is a function of different definitions of violence and huge "over reporting" compared to a country like India etc .
To compare the Stats is--- India versus Sweden ----- absurd .
The same is true globally --- a point which several people here and El Mo in particular refuse to register .
Tangential , but key and fundamental once people want to make raw data comparisons .