There’s a chilling scene in Canadian filmmaker Nisha Pahuja’s documentary The World Before Her. Prachi Trivedi, a brawny, bushy-browed counseller with Durga Vahini, the women’s wing of the hardline Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), talks about being beaten with a hot iron rod by her father. There is a fiery rebellion in her eyes, yet, eerily, a gratefulness. “Knowing I’m a girl child, he let me live,” she says. “In a traditional family, people don’t let a girl child live....” Juxtaposed against her story is that of Pooja Chopra, winner of the 2009 Miss India pageant. Pooja’s mother left her father when he said he didn’t want another daughter. Pahuja’s film alternates between polar opposites: the ‘aspirational’ world of beauty pagea­nts and that of the Durga Vahini. Two dubious means of empowering women.

The 2012 documentary, finally releasing in India this week, focuses on two young women taking part in two very different training camps—Prachi at the Durga...