Fair Game

“Am I fair?” she asks looking eagerly for an affirmative response.

“Yes. You have always been fair and balanced” is the reply with some concern.

“No I mean fair” said she pleading.

“Fair, you have always been fair to me, you are kind” is the confused reply.

“No you fool. I mean doesn’t my skin look fair?” said she.

                                          
                   

“My mom is going to be upset” she says looking in the mirror

“Why?  Hope all is well” inquired the concerned friend.

“I was outdoors for two days and I have become dark. My mom always scolds me that I am very careless in this matter” said she looking dismayed as she inspected herself in the mirror.

       

                                 

“She’s hot, isn't she” said he pointing to the cover of a leading actress in a glamour magazine

“She is emphatically not hot. She is black. I saw her at this party, she is ugly. I wonder why she wears bikinis and mini skirt when she is so dark. Look at those dark legs. Her buttocks are even blacker. I’d rather see my maid pose in a bikini ” she replied.

                                             

 

“You know things weren't as bad before” said the elderly lady.

“Things aren't that bad at all now. What are you saying” said the man.

“No I mean she was fair before, very fair, then a bout of jaundice and she turned dark, we tried but it looks like permanent damage” said the elderly lady looking sad.      

 

 

“Do not worry my sweet child” said the elderly lady to her teen grand daughter who had just arrived in to spend the vacations with her.

“I am fine, gammy. Not worried. I did well with my exams” said the teen as she browsed through her what’s app messages.

“It is that wrenched Mumbai weather, makes people dark” said granny with irritation.

Suddenly the messaging stopped and as she looked at her beloved ‘gammy’.

“But I know of this special herbal paste, apply this while you are here and you will fair. Also, do not step out in the sun” said granny beaming happily as she rushed into the kitchen to make her special

                      

 

“She may be dark but she is talented. My older daughter is fair but my younger has proved that she is no less an achiever.” said the proud mother beaming as her daughter stood first in her class.

 

 

“I have given up drinking coffee” said she.

“Sleeping problems?” asked the friend

“My aunt told me you become dark if you drink coffee” said she.

 

 

“He is such a wizard, he can achieve anything. He can even make an African look good” said the actress at a press conference complimenting her make-up artist.

 

 

A group of ebullient young Kenyan exchange students cross a busy road in Pune

“Well Signor Charcoal, where do you think you are going” yelled one in the local tongue.

“What’s up ‘dark’ Lady of the night” yelled another in local tongue from the opposite side, the words ‘dark’ and ‘night’ used here to mock her skin tone.

“It looks like they are going to absorb all the light through their skin and turn day into night” said a third again in local tongue.

While none of the word were comprehended, the tone of ridicule, the look of disdain and the attitude of humiliation was amply clear to the hapless targets. They walked somberly across, all their jubilance drained out.

 

 

"Look at the driver, he is all so fair” said he

“Look at the owner, black as night” said she

 “Amazing isn’t it, the owner looking like the diver and vice versa

 

 

"I may not be handsome, but I am definitely not black. Am I" he wondered aloud as if he had found a defect in himself.

 

 

 

Most of these remarks were made by people I know, they are educated, cultured and are generally regarded as decent citizens. Many among them have travelled all over the world and are exposed to myriad cultures.

A week ago, BJP Minister Giriraj Singh found himself in a bit of a bother when he said the following "If Rajiv Gandhi would've married a Nigerian and Sonia Gandhi wasn't white-skinned, would Congress have accepted her?" The media was outraged as it always is, within no time he was branded racist. So how do we define a racist? 

 

Here the definition from the Oxford dictionary “A person who shows or feels discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or who believes that a particular race is superior to another”  So was Giriraj Singh discriminating or showing prejudiue against any race? All he was talking about is what an ugly attitude that most of us have with respect to the color of skin. These very observations were also made by the noted journalist Tavleen Singh. 

Patrick French has written the following in India:A Portrait:

"Despite Bal Thackeray’s jibes, most voters did not see her as a “white skin”; with her dark hair and light brown Italian complexion, she looked as if she might be from a similar ethnic background to the Nehrus, high-caste North Indians. Had she been blond Northern European or black African in origin, she would never have been credible as an Indian leader."

 

So, how did we become such a deeply bigoted nation for matters pertaining to skin color.  India is known for its rich diversity and a huge part of this diversity is the diversity in physical appearance.

 

Conventional wisdom suggests that since we have been the victim of colonization and systemic racism under the British that we would make a conscious effort to transcend that. But we find a strange situation where despite being a victim we are also a perpetrator.  

 

We all know of bleach cream adverts also known euphemistically as fairness creams or skin lighters. The scenarios depicted in the advert is as follows, a model of lighter skin is painted black. The person the model is portraying finds himself/herself rejected at a job interview and/or by the opposite sex, consequently, the individual is miserable. Then a friend recommends the bleach cream. Suddenly upbeat music begins to play and miraculously in minutes, the skin of the individual turns several hues lighter. The individual manages to attract the opposite sex and/or emerges at the top of his profession along with being unable to get rid of a smile.  

We live in times when our news media is in a perpetual sense of outrage. But if you want real outrage it is these bleach cream that via their adverts promote the worst sort of stereotypes. It blatantly associated skin color with success and beauty. But above all can cause a great deal of self-loathing for those with darker complexion. Most of these adverts are done by our favorite actors that we look up to as idols.

I will leave it to the anthropologists to understand how and when this deep-rooted despicable prejudice about color occurred.

Was it after the British ruled us? Quite possible.

Did they successfully manage to indoctrinate us into thinking that whatever they had was superior and whatever we had was inferior? I am inclined to believe that theory. But does that also extend to skin color? I do not know. But we have been independent for more than 60 years. Has the influence been so strong?

 

So let’s look at the science of this, the following is an explanation about skin color taken from here

So why do people from different parts of the world have different colored skin? Why do people from the tropics generally have darker skin color that those who live in colder climates? Variations in human skin color are adaptive traits that correlate closely with geography and the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) radiation.

As early humans moved into hot, open environments in search of food and water, one big challenge was keeping cool. The adaptation that was favored involved an increase in the number of sweat glands on the skin while at the same time reducing the amount of body hair. With less hair, perspiration could evaporate more easily and cool the body more efficiently.

But this less-hairy skin was a problem because it was exposed to a very strong sun, especially in lands near the equator. Since strong sun exposure damages the body, the solution was to evolve skin that was permanently dark so as to protect against the sun’s more damaging rays.

Melanin, the skin's brown pigment, is a natural sunscreen that protects tropical peoples from the many harmful effects of ultraviolet (UV) rays. UV rays can, for example, strip away folic acid, a nutrient essential to the development of healthy fetuses. Yet when a certain amount of UV rays penetrates the skin, it helps the human body use vitamin D to absorb the calcium necessary for strong bones.

This delicate balancing act explains why the peoples that migrated to colder geographic zones with less sunlight developed lighter skin color. As people moved to areas farther from the equator with lower UV levels, natural selection favored lighter skin which allowed UV rays to penetrate and produce essential vitamin D.

The darker skin of peoples who lived closer to the equator was important in preventing folate deficiency. Measures of skin reflectance, a way to quantify skin color by measuring the amount of light it reflects, in people around the world support this idea. While UV rays can cause skin cancer, because skin cancer usually affects people after they have had children, it likely had little effect on the evolution of skin color because evolution favors changes that improve reproductive success.

There is also a third factor that affects skin color: coastal peoples who eat diets rich in seafood enjoy this alternate source of vitamin D. That means that some Arctic peoples, such as native peoples of Alaska and Canada, can afford to remain dark-skinned even in low UV areas. In the summer they get high levels of UV rays reflected from the surface of snow and ice, and their dark skin protects them from this reflected light.

 

So it does appears that the color of our skin is merely a genetic happenstance. I recall a wise man once telling me to judge a person not for what he or she is but what he or she does. Since it has been proved that skin color is what a human being is, I wonder why it should be a matter of pride or virtue or shame or vice. 

 

In the end our looks are the way we happened to be and is inextricably linked to our family and our national heritage. We have to embrace all this, and understand that it is this great diversity in features, skin color, body shape, and hair color that make each individual unique and fascinating. 

 

To feel ashamed one’s appearance about it is to feel ashamed of your family, your own country, and ultimately yourself. It will also be a blatant insult to all those who fought for our freedom, they fought for freedom not just in a physical sense but also a mental sense. A freedom that would make every citizen of this great nation proud of being an India and everything that is associated with it.

 

It is essential for parents, friends, siblings, partners, spouses and prospective spouses to understand and appreciate this. To make sure that we live full and wholesome lives by openly embracing who we are and that includes what we look like. We have to inspire our fellow human beings to achieve beyond their wildest imaginations and enable them to feel proud of what they are and their heritage. 

 

I am an absolutist in freedom of expression but I will break the rule of a lifetime and ask for banning of those wrenched ‘fairness cream’ adverts. Hopefully, our ‘icons’ will refrain from endorsing these products, surely there is a better way to make money than inflicting pain and shame on others.

 

If we are to make India a global superpower, it begins with us feeling good about ourselves. Hopefully, we will rid ourselves of the needless burden soon.