realpolitikasia: History of India's Jewish beauty queens:Compare this to Chris Bowen's "the genius of Australian multiculturalism"

NOTE

This story is one of many similar stories of the world's races and cultures

mixing in Asia,in ways that have Australian multiculturalist panting with excitement at the very thought.

Still, despite this few of us are in favour of multiculturalism. We know the dangers, often having lived through them. Yet, we have to suffer the pain of hearing the likes of Chris Bowen, the former minister for immigration ,declaring the "genius of multiculturalism".worse have people like him tell us we simply do not understand the nature of a "true" multicultural society.

Excerpt

Although Naqi Jahan is considered Jewish because of her Jewish mother, she was raised as a Muslim, as her mother Esther married a popular Muslim film actor of those times, Kumar ne Syed Hasan Ali. Today their son, Haider Ali, is a successful character artist in Bollywood.

History of India's Jewish beauty queens

In spite of numerical insignificance of Jews in India’s huge population, their women went on to represent country internationally in several beauty pageants
Dr. Navras Jaat Aafreedi, Tazpit

Given the fact that Jewish beauty has been celebrated in history, it comes as no surprise that in spite of the numerical insignificance of Jews in India’s huge population, 5,000 in the total Indian population of 1.3 billion, their women went on to represent the country internationally at a number of beauty pageants.

In fact, they were the first to do so, as the very first Miss India was Jewish. The first Miss India pageant in 1947 was organized by Femina, a Times of India publication, and the beauty who was crowned as Miss India was a Baghdadi Jewess, Esther Victoria Abraham (1916-2006), who later became popular as a successful film actress with the pseudonym Pramila.

Two decades later, on March 12, 1967, her daughter Naqi Jahan, who was chosen Miss India in the pageant organized by the popular magazine Eve’s Weekly that year, became the first to represent India at the Queen of the Pacific Quest beauty pageant held in Melbourne, Australia.

Although Naqi Jahan is considered Jewish because of her Jewish mother, she was raised as a Muslim, as her mother Esther married a popular Muslim film actor of those times, Kumar ne Syed Hasan Ali. Today their son, Haider Ali, is a successful character artist in Bollywood.

The honor of being the first Indian to participate in the Miss World pageant went to Fleur Ezekiel, a member of the Bene Israel community, numerically the largest of the three Jewish communities in India. She represented India in the Miss World pageant of 1959.

The mother of the Roy Kapur brothers, Siddharth, Kunal and Aditya, who are making waves in Bollywood today, was Miss India 1972, Salome Aaron. Aaron, a ballroom dancer, later went on to make a career for herself as a film choreographer in Bollywood.

Of her three sons she had with her Hindu husband, the eldest, Siddharth, has found great success as the managing director of a film company, which is the joint venture of Disney and UTV in India, while the younger two, Kunal and Aditya, have become successful actors.

It is interesting to note that her youngest son, Aditya Roy Kapur, is the second male lead in the only second Indian film to be released simultaneously in India and Israel, "Yeh Jawaani hai Deewani."

The author is a scholar of Indo-Judaic Studies, an assistant professor of History at Gautam Buddha University, India