Beauty, Caste and ‘Miss India’ Contests

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in his Prayagraj meeting on August 24, 2024 said that “90% Indians do not figure even in the Miss India contest”. As a response to this statement, the Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiran Rijiju said Gandhi’s reflected only his “Balak Buddhi” (childish mentality). This phrase to target Rahul Gandhi was also used by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Parliament debates earlier. The question, however, is: what is the truth about 90% Indian women and participation in Miss India contests and selection of Miss India, and then moving forward to the global pageant for Miss World?

This whole Miss India contest has set a standard for beauty of women. It has become a cause of huge celebration as well as social and cultural status. In the pre-Independence era, it was impossible to imagine a Brahmin or a Kshatriya woman participating in such a body display of ‘beauty’. But, in post-Independence India, it is the upper caste young women who train themselves for this achievement with some already winning the contest. But the idea of ‘that beauty’ lies in caste, colour and education stereotypes. 

The very idea of beauty in India is constructed around a certain type of complexion and a woman’s social location in terms of caste and class. Those who judge and define which woman is ‘beautiful’, as well as participants who reach that platform, are all aligned in terms of caste, complexion and wealth.

Dalit/adivasi/OBC (Other Backward Classes) women cannot reach the beauty contest platforms because these are out of their reach.  Both judges and participants draw heavily from the written and painted visual images of beauty from ancient Sanskrit books. The modern paintings of a model beauty also draw heavily from those textual narratives.  

In India, the idea of woman’s beauty basically comes from mythological books, described by the writers in Sanskrit, as well as paintings that influenced the very same caste and class people. A writer as an influential intellectual narrativised the women of those castes and classes, and the painter enfigurated it as an art, either from those textual narratives or from their existential life. For example, the modern Indian woman’s beauty is governed by Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings of mythological women in multiple colours. The standard beautiful women in those paintings happen to be Saraswati, Lakshmi, Parvathi, Sita, Shakuntala and so on. Ravi Varma never painted Surpanakha as a beautiful woman. Nor did his paintings show any working woman as beautiful. In mythological texts, all Shudra women were supposed to be working women and were not supposed to be beautiful, Such women’s caste and their labouring life in the fields itself determined the definition of beauty. The beautiful goddess Saraswati never was meant to give them education and beautiful goddess Lakshmi was never meant to give them wealth. This long-lasting mythological relationship between beauty and caste did not disappear in Independent India. Text books that children read continue to inject the very same idea of beauty.

The description of Varudhini’s beauty and her love affair with Pravarakhya, in Markandeya Purana, is described in many school books. Let us remember that these narratives of beautiful women have been set in the caste background of Brahmins or Kshatriyas. The Shudra and Vaishya, 'Mlecha' women are never described as beautiful in what the Right-wing scholars and leaders now call “Hindu Books”. 

The same idea of a woman’s beauty dominates our film industry, TV serials, anchors and presenters. 

It is an undeniable fact that there are thousands of women from Shudra/Dalit and adivasi communities who were as beautiful as the mythological women, if not more. Where is a description of them in mythological books? Except some Gopika women narratives in a negative sense in Mahabharata around Krishna’s life, no women's beauty narratives of Shudra/Dalit/adivasi women ever got written or painted.   

The notion of a woman’s beauty runs through modern cinema, TV serials, TV anchors and also stage anchors. This notion gets extended to women’s beauty contests where fame, publicity, popularity, money and glamour are involved. From where do the Miss India selection committee members draw their notion of beauty? What castes do they come from? Most of them invariably are from the upper castes and draw their idea of beauty from mythological books, Ravi Varma paintings and daily discussions about the very same standards of beauty in their drawing rooms and dining tables. Framed paintings hang on their walls.

The cinema and TV industries select women of ‘that beauty’ plus modern English education and their adaptation to designer clothes. The Shudra/Dalit/adivasi women have no access to these things even now.

In the West, the idea of women’s beauty is consciously getting diversified with the inclusion of black, brown and other women, not just white. We can see this in their cinemas and on television. There are no ‘divine standards’ for beautiful women in the Western civilisation.

In India, such inclusiveness of women in all fields is not yet a norm. Rahul Gandhi is now talking about such unusual things as a changemaker. Certainly, in traditional and conservative discourse and political postures, changemakers are attacked as ‘childish’, what in Hindutva language is termed as ‘Balak Buddhi’.

Even in normal liberal discourse, issues such as which caste represents India as Miss India or Miss World, are considered immature and childish. But at least one politician, now Leader of the Opposition, is raising these questions. Should they dismiss him as childish?  

If one looks at the list of women who won the Miss World representing India, one can see the connection between caste and English education.

The first Miss World in 1966 was Reita Faria, a converted Catholic Christian upper caste woman from Goa. The second was Aishwarya Rai, another well-educated upper caste woman from Karnataka’s Konkan region. The third, Diana Hayden, fourth Yukta Mookhey, fifth Priyanka Chopra and sixth Manushi Chhillar.

We all know how Aishwarya Rai and Priyanka Chopra became globally popular actresses by using the Miss World status. They all have caste-class status with good English medium education. All of them first became Miss India and moved on to become Miss World.   

 If such questions are raised by Shudra/Dalit/adivasi men or women intellectuals, the ‘others’, who represent the high moral, casteless, pretentious intellectuals, ignore or dismiss them as foolish. When a leader like Rahul Gandhi talks about these things, at least a section of the media notices while the ‘other’ (in this case, the ruling force) responds. That itself contributes to change- making.

The metaphor ‘Miss India’ is politically powerful. The absence of 90% Indians in all fields, including in the realm of representing ‘womenness’ by women themselves because they are born Shudra or Dalit or Adivasi, is very creative.

In an ideologically oppressive culture, the idea of parampara (tradition) that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh/Bharatiya Janata Party intellectuals and leaders term as nationalistic, that parampara in the cultural realm of beauty comes only from certain books, which transcends into paintings and practice in real life. That, in fact, is not nationalism.

Raising questions about that realm, therefore, touches a raw nerve that parampara, and exposes its mapping onto modern civil society and state.

Rahul Gandhi has rocked that core cultural preserve of the casteist parampara. One hopes that those who need change and want to be included in every sphere, including in the Miss India and Miss World pageant, understand this.   

The writer is a political theorist, social activist and author. He is

former Director, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad. The views are personal.