With all due respect to Commander McBragg, the following United Artists 1938 travelogue of Hindu Temples of India is fascinating on so many levels …
… not least of which is its utter political incorrectness (pointing at the silly Hindoo and their silly, colorful, multifold, bloodthirsty gods), the insight into how the British Raj saw its people, and, yes, a view of some cool Hindu temples and rituals from the first half of the last century. All that was missing was Indy and Short Round riding by on an elephant …
I couldn’t help but think of a parallel universe, where Indian traveloguists were talking about the strange Christian Faith of the West, and showing pictures of the Vatican with its rituals, its oddly garbed priests, its multitudinous saints and holy buildings, its many and varied orders of holy people, its strange cannibalistic religious rituals and the odd division of its unitary God into three manifestations …
Still, some spiffy color footage from 1938, even if it throws in some Muslim (not Hindu) Taj Mahal shots in at the end. Those zany Indians — they don’t know what religion they practice!
(via How to Be a Retronaut)