THE OBTUSE INDIA AND IT’S FAIR SKIN OBSESSION

 

It all starts with the brutal murder of George Floyd by the white policeman, Derek Chauvin that sparked the fire of the #blacklivesmatter movement and widespread unrest throughout America that we saw in the previous months. It was long time coming with all the violence and racist attacks against innocent black people. Here in the diverse country of India, discrimination is also diversified. Along with issues like racism, sexism, religious prejudice, and a myriad other forms of societal biases, there exists a system of thought programmed into the minds of our people known as ‘Colourism’. Colourism is defined as prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group. The term was coined by Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Alice Walker in 1982.

History

The discrimination against darker-skinned individuals in India is a result of years of colonialism and imperialism.

In 1000 BCE, the "Light-skinned" Aryans invaded India. They took over and flourished in the North of the subcontinent. Meanwhile, the darker-skinned Dravidians were the rulers in the South. Aryans who were superior in strength and manpower went on to conquer the Dravidians and took over the country. The victory of the Aryans marked lighter skin as superior to its darker variants for the first time; a twisted version of "light prevailing over dark". India's long history also tells us that the colonization of the country by other light skin oppressors like the Persians, the Mughals and especially the British, who reigned here for the longest time, has led to the subliminal conditioning that light skin symbolizes superiority and can stipulate ultimate power. When the British colonizers raped slaves, the children thus born were given special treatment considering his or her lighter skin tone while other slave children were subjected to harsh labor and inhuman treatment as their parents. Even after India gained freedom in the twentieth century, prejudices such as Colourism remained and still lives to this day in everybody's minds rent-free.

The caste system in India also egged on the internalized racism by making the lighter-skinned upper-class Brahmins superior to the darker-skinned lower class Dalits. "Asuryasparsh" is a term in Sanskrit which means someone who is untouched by the sun and fair will be purer than everyone else. This idea is also implied here, the upper class people who stayed inside their homes remained fairer and “purer’ while the Dalits were considered inferior to others ignoring the fact that it is the harsh physical labor in the sun that causes them to have a darker skin tone.

Religion also depicts and glorifies Colourism by including it in the mythics. In Ramayana, the good, protagonist of the story Rama is fair skinned while the evil, antagonist Ravana is considered dark skinned. This trend continues on to make all the gods, goddesses and angels fair while all the demons remain dark. Another example is Krishna whose skin is defined as ‘Neela megha shayama varna’ (as dark as the stormy clouds), which when it came to images and other media, people portrayed Krishna blue just to avoid a popularly worshipped god being black. Alas! Even the Gods cannot escape Colourism.

Colourism Today

Intoday's society, Colourism exists in various forms in every environment from the home to the workplace. It starts at home from when parents compare their children's skin tone to the kids in the neighborhood and prepare bogus concoctions to make their children fairer. There is an increasing demand for fair skinned brides in matrimonial sites to such an extent some sites are removing the skin tone filter to discourage such a bias. Even in the workplace fair people, especially ladies, are more respected and even given "special treatment" while darker people have to work twice as hard for the same positions. Even though majority of the country is brown or "dusky”, all the major beauty production lines only provide products for either fair skin tones or black or dark skin tones. It is hard to find a product that matches an average Indians original skin tone, making people consume more products just to mix and match to find the right color that matches their skin.

The Bias Inside The Bias

Colourism has been seen to affect women more than men. The existing beauty standard considers "fair, rosy cheeked, red lipped" as some of the factors making women beautiful while for men the traits are "tall, dark and handsome". In some villages, fair female children are considered a blessing by the gods while if their skin is dark, it is because of some sin the parents committed or just “nasar”. From birth, it is imposed into a child's brain that to be valued and to be considered beautiful, one needs to be light skinned, darker skin is a disadvantage and unless you somehow become fairer, you won't be desired by men or admired by society. As a result of this psychological surveys note that fair-skinned Indian women have more confidence and self-esteem while women with darker complexions deal with inferiority complexes. They buy more and more skin whitening products and go through treatments to get fairer, so they could be considered "beautiful" too.

Fair Skin Bias In The Film Industry

Take all the current famous movie stars and consider the fair to dark skin ratio, you will find that majority of all the leading movie stars are light-skinned. In a country of brown people, we look up to a group of almost entirely fair-skinned people as our role models and influences. The few darker stars would be either from the lighter end of their skin tone or would have gone through skin lightening treatments at least once. Many of the mainstream stars like Priyanka Chopra and Kajol have admitted to have gone through skin lightening procedures to improve their complexion.

As in many other fields, here too Colourism affects women more. We almost always see a fair-skinned leading female next to a brown male protagonist. The darker skin of the leading man is considered normal and even celebrated while if the main actress is brown, people immediately drop their interest or criticize the casting. This is especially prominent in the south were fairer actresses from the north are brought in to fill in the main character's role to please the audience.

Even if the character being depicted is of a dark skin tone, it would be played by a fair actor wearing brown makeup. This has been called out in recent times and termed as "Brown face". Most recent cases of this can be seen in the movie ‘Bala’ where the actress Bhumi Pednekar was made to wear brown makeup to play her role and in ‘Super 30’ where Hrithik Roshan is made to wear brown face to play the iconic role of the Indian Mathematician, Anand Kumar. There also exists discrimination against dark skinned actors where makeup artists make them wear lighter makeup to make them look fairer. The casting director of a movie starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui was noted saying fair-skinned actors could not be cast alongside him or it would look awkward. Actors have come out against this bias based on color, notable among them being Nandita Das with her "India's Got Colour" Movement and the “Dark Is Beautiful” Movement by a nonprofit organization called Women of Worth.

Dark Is Beautiful Too!

A resistance against the fair skin obsession of the media has been formed in recent years. One of the prominent people who raised her voice against this bias in the Media Industry was Nandita Das, with many other celebrities joining the movement later. In the latest #blacklivesmatter issues, Indians took it upon themselves to call out skin whitening products such as Fair and Lovely on their blatant colorist name and agenda. This movement saw some success with the brand changing their name to a slightly less offensive version of the former.  We still have a long way to go with all our media outlets putting us through subliminal conditioning portraying white skin as the epitome of beauty and refusing to let darker-skinned people have the spotlight. But the ice has thawed a bit; the resistance movement has changed many things and will continue to do so, one baby step at a time. It was in 2015 when a Delhi consumer court fined ‘Emami’, Fair and Handsome face cream INR 1.5 million for being guilty of “misrepresentation to the public.” The court had said, “It uses the word “Gorapan” in advertisement No.1, which means fair complexion. In advertisement No.2, it gives out a promise that the use of the product for a period of four weeks will ensure a fair complexion.” But the product failed to fulfill this promise.

We need more people to wake up and realize skin color does not judge anyone's value and change the narrative put in position by the older generations.  

YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL AS THE WAY YOU ARE!!

- Prudentia and Lustitia