You can't ignore its strong message

It took the filmmaker four long years to make the film. Based on an extremist Hindu nationalist camp for girls and on a beauty contest, Nisha Pahuja, a Canadian filmmaker draws parallels between the women of these two very ‘different’ worlds – women wearing bikinis and women learning to shoot at the Durga Vahini camps.

The World Before Her is a documentary film written and directed by Pahuja and is presented by Anurag Kashyap, and it shows how women in India can adapt to different environments.

The documentary profiles two young women participating in two completely different environments – Ruhi Singh, who wants to become Miss India, and Prachi Trivedi, who is a part of Durga Vahini camps.

The film has won accolades from critics for showing two diametrically opposed domains in a non-biased tone and there’s an enormous amount of homework
that has gone into this documentary.

In the film Pahuja tried for a political angle at certain points, but the film’s strength isn’t in the statement it makes about Hindu nationalism or the role that camps like Durga Vahini play when there’s communal violence.

The power of The World Before Her is its sensitive alertness to how these two very different platforms for Indian women both appear to be rotten planks.

When talking about being independent, the models taking part in Miss India go through rigorous training sessions, even consisting a botox session, in which many contestants were even hesitant to go through the process.

But, to look ‘good’, one needs to have that perfect jawline and lips. On the other hand, even the bikini round is not aired on television.

Which India are we talking about? One which is producing beautiful models, thanks to botox or the one producing Hindu extremists who are told not to make Muslim friends and raise slogans like doodh maango kheer denge, Kashmir maango
cheer denge.

The World Before Her definitely gets a thumbs up for its treatment of the sensitive issue and showcasing tensions between old world values and idealistic goals.