Melbourne:
A 21-year-old woman, who won the Miss IndiaNZ beauty contest in New Zealand in April, is at the centre of a new racism row after being accused of not looking Indian enough.
The blonde, blue-eyed Jacinta Lal was booed and has been the subject of complaints to organisers from Indian spectators who, she says, are no better than Paul Henry, the controversial New Zealand TV host who mocked and mispronounced Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit's name.
Henry resigned after India lodged a diplomatic protest with New Zealand against his comments.
Lal, whose father is a Fiji Indian and mother a New Zealander, won the central district Miss IndiaNZ contest in Wellington in April, but the row has only now been revealed after the Henry incident, The New Zealand Herald reported.
Festival organiser Dharmesh Parikh said he had received complaints questioning Jacinta Lal's eligibility to be in the pageant.
Lal's supporters said they are disgusted at the way she was booed.
Lal said there was no difference between what Paul Henry said and the members of the Indian community who criticised her win.
"They are all wrong and should not say things like that," she said. "It was just appalling," said her boyfriend's mother, Serena Fiso.
"It was so disgraceful. We were just dumbfounded." Fiso put a photo of Jacinta on a Paul Henry fan site on Facebook on Monday.
"The Indian community seem to have taken great offence to (Henry's) comments but when I attended that beauty pageant, I saw huge offence coming back the other way," she said.
Lal said she had heard people saying that "I wasn't Indian looking enough to win the pageant".
"But despite those small-minded people that made those comments, there were many Indians who encouraged me to enter the pageant. So just because some narrow-minded people make a comment like that we can't assume that all Indians think the same way," she said.
This is the third racial row involving Indians or Indian-origin people in about a week's time in New Zealand.
New Zealand's India-origin Governor-General Sir Anand Satyanand became a victim of racial slur when Henry asked whether he was a New Zealander or not.
The blonde, blue-eyed Jacinta Lal was booed and has been the subject of complaints to organisers from Indian spectators who, she says, are no better than Paul Henry, the controversial New Zealand TV host who mocked and mispronounced Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit's name.
Henry resigned after India lodged a diplomatic protest with New Zealand against his comments.
Lal, whose father is a Fiji Indian and mother a New Zealander, won the central district Miss IndiaNZ contest in Wellington in April, but the row has only now been revealed after the Henry incident, The New Zealand Herald reported.
Festival organiser Dharmesh Parikh said he had received complaints questioning Jacinta Lal's eligibility to be in the pageant.
Lal's supporters said they are disgusted at the way she was booed.
Lal said there was no difference between what Paul Henry said and the members of the Indian community who criticised her win.
"They are all wrong and should not say things like that," she said. "It was just appalling," said her boyfriend's mother, Serena Fiso.
"It was so disgraceful. We were just dumbfounded." Fiso put a photo of Jacinta on a Paul Henry fan site on Facebook on Monday.
"The Indian community seem to have taken great offence to (Henry's) comments but when I attended that beauty pageant, I saw huge offence coming back the other way," she said.
Lal said she had heard people saying that "I wasn't Indian looking enough to win the pageant".
"But despite those small-minded people that made those comments, there were many Indians who encouraged me to enter the pageant. So just because some narrow-minded people make a comment like that we can't assume that all Indians think the same way," she said.
This is the third racial row involving Indians or Indian-origin people in about a week's time in New Zealand.
New Zealand's India-origin Governor-General Sir Anand Satyanand became a victim of racial slur when Henry asked whether he was a New Zealander or not.
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