Confusion may be construed to be the theme of "Miss India Georgia" as well. Daniel Friedman, a descendant of Russian Jewish immigrants to this country and Sharon Grimberg, descended from the Jewish community of Singapore, decided to make this film after spotting a news item advertising a "Miss Hindu Dayton" pageant in the Dayton Ohio Daily News, in "an attempt to understand the process of acculturation undergone by the Jewish community in this country fifty years ago," according to Friedman. The film follows four contestants in the Miss India Georgia pageant and through these four well chosen subjects plots the lives of their families attempting to assimilate into a foreign culture with the spectre of their Indian background, visually reinforced by their colour, following them everywhere.
In a telling juxtaposition right in the beginning of the film there are two soundbites, evidently in reply to a query about what a pageant such as this one means to the different people who come to watch it. One of the older people claims that it is to show their American born children what kind of clothes Indians wear and "how to behave" while one of the younger people says that the pageant is proof that the Indian community is trying to adopt American ways.
The question of which "ways" are from where and how distorted the perception of these "ways" has become within the immigrant experience is one which remains unresolved but is is implicitly touched upon throughout the film. There is a sense of loss as well. Dan Friedman told me that the rate of marriage outside of the Jewish community has gone up remarkably since the time he was in high school and this makes him uncomfortable although he can't quite say why. This discomfort, so many generations down, is a transformed version of the fears and insecurities of the parents we see in the film who keep trying to tell their children about an "Indian culture" which dates back to the time they left India, which India itself has left behind to a great extent.

-- Amitabha Bagchi

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