How Sushmita & Aishwarya put India on the map | The Culture Project - video Dailymotion

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On 22nd May 1994—exactly 31 years ago yesterday—Sushmita Sen became India's first-ever Miss Universe. Weeks later, Aishwarya Rai followed, crowned Miss World.

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00:00In the summer of 1994, India was still stretching awake.

00:06Three years into economic liberalisation, India was still wiping off the sleep of ration books

00:10and dhrudarshan grain. Remember that? Cable TV had just crept in and the Indian middle class

00:15was watching wide-eyed as the world came closer pixel by pixel. Then came Sushmita,

00:22a girl from Delhi with a lilt in a smile and fire in a walk. She wasn't the obvious winner,

00:27she was India's first. A teen who spoke of compassion and conviction as if they were

00:32accessories she wore as confidently as her gown. When she was crowned Miss Universe,

00:37the nation gasped. Millions felt a sense of pride that was unfamiliar but addictive.

00:43And barely weeks later came Aishwarya, the storm behind those steady sea blue eyes,

00:48a poised magnetic woman who spoke less but meant more. She won Miss World and suddenly the globe

00:53looked a little more Indian. She wasn't just beautiful, she was elegance in a language

00:58even the West understood. Two Indian women, two global crowns, in the same year. In a country

01:05still figuring out how to use a debit card. That mattered. Their wins were collective elevation.

01:10For girls who were told beauty is shameful. For boys who were taught ambition was a man's job.

01:15A country coded to look inward, suddenly dared to be seen. Because beauty pageants, no matter how

01:21problematic, were once our only stage on the world map. Before Sundar Pichai and Satya Narela,

01:27before Virat and Alia, there was Sushmita and Aishwarya, the first Indian women many countries

01:31had ever heard of. Yes, there's reason to critique the pageants, the commodification of women,

01:36the narrow templates of beauty, the whispers of skin tone politics and postcolonial hangovers,

01:41but also try telling that to the little girls in Patna and Panjim who for the first time felt that maybe

01:47they could be more than a good bride. The mid-90s India was in flux, freshly liberalised,

01:51nervously capitalistic, still clutching its Neuroobian ideals in one hand, while the other

01:56hand reached for Revlon and MTV. Sushmita and Aishwarya's wins proved to countless Indias

02:02that they could compete on the world stage and win. That they could be more than yoga and snake

02:07chalmers, that an Indian accent could sound aspirational, not laughable. They mirrored the

02:12country's metamorphosis, from modesty to ambition, from shy to sure. Today they are both more than

02:17their crowns. Sushmita, a single mother, an Addison's disease survivor, a woman who walks her talk.

02:23Aishwarya, a Khan veteran, a global icon, still haunting in grace. But their truest legacy

02:29is in that exact moment, 1994, when two Indian girls walked onto a world stage and did not blink.

02:36They not only wore the crown, they made it Indian. And for a billion quietly waiting to be noticed,

02:41that meant everything. I am Manish Adhikari. Thank you for watching The Culture Project on More.

How Sushmita & Aishwarya put India on the map | The Culture Project

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