The World Before Her : when contradicting ideas concur

Almost all women in India, from the most docile and submissive to the seemingly liberated, are forced to lead lives that straddle the extremities of brash sexual objectification and abject domestication, says Toronto-based documentary filmmaker Nisha Pahuja, whose award-winning documentary, ‘The World Before Her’ opened for a week’s screening in the city on Friday.

Objectifying women

The feature-length documentary juxtaposes the glittering world of beauty pageantry, which objectifies women, with the bigoted camp of a Hindu fundamentalist group, Durga Vahini. “Initially, I was only going to do a film on the Miss India pageantry. But as I went about doing research, the pageant was facing stiff opposition from Hindu right wing groups and feminists and it suddenly appeared to attain political dimensions,” Ms. Pahuja told

The Hindu .

“They may be competing ideologies, but both use women in their own way to perpetuate the idea of what India should be,” she says.

Ms. Pahuja began doing research for the film in 2008 and shot Miss India pageant extensively in 2011. The film debuted in 2012, winning critical acclaim and rave reviews. “In North America where I come from, there is a strong tradition of documentary films and they are really engaging. Things are changing for good in India as well, where entertainment only meant Bollywood sometime ago,” she says.

Ms. Pahuja waited patiently for two years, building relationship with those in the closed outfit Durga Vahini, Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s women’s wing, before being allowed entry into its camp for filming. “Interestingly, the VHP really liked the final product, though everyone including I expected them to oppose it. I guess it was because the film did not sensationalise anything it presented. We had a very balanced approach,” she reasons.

“The film is about India with all its contradictions and women’s rights.”

Ms. Pahuja had earlier taken ‘Bollywood Bound’, on NRIs heading for Bollywood dreaming of making it big there, and ‘Diamond Road’ on global diamond business.

‘The World Before Her’ was released in India early this month with support from filmmaker Anurag Kashyap. “He saw the film and really liked it,” she says, insisting all women in India are able to relate to her film. “It talks about issues like objectification, domestication, female infanticide and other ills of patriarchy that they all deal with.”

As she plans to take the film across the country for limited theatrical screening and screening at colleges and universities with the help of women’s rights groups, she’s working on a film on the global ways of religious fundamentalism.