Mother India: Selections from the Controversial 1927 Text, Edited and with an Introduction by Mrinalini Sinha Book

For an anthropological study of Indian beauty pageants, the depth of Dewey's analysis is surprisingly limited. She shows that the cultural, political and so on representations of femininity/class/beauty are part of broader global processes - but to draw such an obvious conclusion after extensive interviews with Miss India candidates, and participating in the month-long judging process, is disappointing. In some parts the book reads too self-consciously as the author makes frequent reference to her own 'unusual beauty' and 'great intellect'. Whilst I would not wish to completely destroy these opinions without having known or read anything else by the author, I suggest that this book may not be the ideal space in which to share them.

The real triumph of this book is not as an academic text but as a piece of intriguing journalism. Once I started to overlook the half-hearted references to panopticon, "Making Miss India Miss World" became extremely interesting. It is the personalities and competition between contestants, the idea of Indianness and the presence of class and domestic geography that make this readable, not the theories Dewey uses to explain them.