History of Beauty Pageants in India

Crowns and Roses

~Yuri~

They are big today, but they have not always been big. Pageants in India were small time local events till not very long ago. Till the 1970s, there were not too many takers. Participating in a pageant or walking down the ramp was not something that young people, especially girls, aspired to do. And if you did dare, you risked being categorized as someone with no other talents, little education, and a lifestyle not befitting someone from a good Indian background. Of the many fashion models that I have come to know over the years, I specifically remember one. She had an older brother. Her grandmother often told the brother that he could go and marry anyone he felt like, that is, anyone but a fashion model. Granny sure didn’t look like she had a great opinion of the likes of her own grand daughter ! But this really is indicative of what that generation of Indians thought of people in the industry.

Given this attitude, we had no representation in any world pageants till 1964, with the sole exception of Indrani Rahman, who participated in the Miss Universe contest in the early 1950s. Indrani too, was not really representative of the country as there was no system in place to select the best, train them, and send them to participate in international contests.

The beginning of the big times really happened in 1964. A small event with just a few entries. The participants were asked to come in the evening, dressed in their best sarees, and over dinner, Meher Mistry emerged as the first ever Miss India. Since then, the graph of the event has been on the up, getting bigger with every passing year. The winners of these yearly Miss India contests started to get noticed by the nation, their lives and careers started to become a little better after winning, Bollywood took up a few of the beauties and rocketed them to national fame, better and better entries from over the country started to come in, and then, as far as recent memory goes, happened the Big Bang. Here’s a little story that happened just before the Big Bang.

The first fashion show that I was to help organize, was for the Diamond Jubilee celebration of the Indian Air Force. We decided to include, as models, the daughters of a few Air Force Officers. While in the Air Force, I had a colleague called Subir Sen. Subir’s daughter was tall, well mannered and pretty (like 15-16 olds can be). She had a certain spark in the eye. But this little girl was due to appear for her XII class board exams in a couple of months. Rightly so, when asked if her daughter could model for that Diamond Jubilee event, her mother, Shubra, immediately clamped down. No way was her daughter going to be doing any fashion shows when that all important Board Exam was looming large on her head. With rehearsals about to begin, we were all standing backstage, Shubra, Subir, their daughter, I and a few others. The mother had said no, the father agreed with the mother, and the daughter did not have much say in the matter. Neither were any of us overly bothered. If not Subir and Shubra’s girl, we’d get someone else ! I did, however, talk to Subir. I said, “Look out for your girl. She’s going to make headlines someday”. Cut to a few years later. I remember the date, 20^th of May, 1994. The Miss Universe pageant was on. It wasn’t being covered by any of the TV channels that we had access to. I was, however, trying to find out what I could, from wherever I could. And then I heard it on the radio. I can claim to be amongst the first few Indians to hear the big news. I picked up the phone and called Subir in his Vasant Kunj, Delhi home. His daughter had just been crowned the new Miss Universe. Sushmita Sen had just created the Big Bang in Indian pageantry. The rest is history.

Participating in a pageant today, is looked upon as a prestigious thing to do. Every small town in India has its own version of different kinds of pageants. From the May Queen to Miss Kanpur, from Miss Srinagar to Miss Kanyakumari, we have them all crowding the competition and vying for that big one. Earlier, little girls used to want to become doctors or businesswomen when they grew up. Today, one in three girls says they want to become Miss India or Miss Universe. And why shouldn’t they ? Life, after all, is for living well !

If you have a dream too, watch this space and I’ll take you through the paces of preparing yourself for that big contest.

If you want to ask me anything else about the subject, contact me on yuriyuriyuri@gmail.com