Racism is once again in the news. We feel miserable about the racist assaults on Indians in Australia. We in India always extol fair complexion and wish to have, especially for our womenfolk, the so-called ‘wheatish complexion’. The agents at the marriage bureaux always wax eloquent on the ‘wheatish complexion’ of the girls available in the marriage market. In the south they even describe the complexion as similar to the red bricks.
Indians have been ‘colour conscious’ for a very long time. In all the states savarnna (fair skin) superiority ruled the roost. The Adivasis both in the north and the south were insulted and even injured. They never got an opportunity to enter schools even for primary education, and government jobs were totally prohibited for them. The ‘lower’ castes were never allowed to enter the temples, and it was after much persuasion that the maharaja of the erstwhile state of Travancore allowed them access near the sanctum sanctorum of temples. This was a revolutionary step that led to a renaissance in Kerala’s social milieu.
Even now, no marriages take place between the so-called ‘fair’ classes of people and the dark skinned lower classes. Though many social revolutionaries have tried to correct the mindset of the masses, they simply refuse to fall in line. And the social malady continues in different forms and shapes. We have to see the ground realities and treat our brethren on equal footing. Gandhiji’s fond dream of bringing up the Harijan still remains a figment of imagination.
In India, we are so miserably colour conscious that we look down on the dark complexioned people. The so-called ‘higher classes’ in our society still look upon the kalu with contempt and the SC/ST people in certain areas of south India never dare enter the main rooms of their feudal lords.
Here the kalu tries to become at least brownish and the brownies try their best to be fair by using whitening creams and lotions that swamp our drug stores. Ayurvedic beauty aids have a ready market and the beauty gurus are having a lovely time. Even the middle-aged housewives who are otherwise charming desperately try to enhance their looks. These beauty-enhancing aids give them a ‘drug store complexion’ and a look that is a little ‘other worldly’.
We are enamoured of colour all the time and believe that fair skin is a special gift of god. Fair skin indeed becomes the most important topic especially in homes where they have girls of marriageable age. That makes us think that the Indians actually have no right to complain against ‘racism’, colour discrimination, et al. We have been facing it from time immemorial.
When I was a student in Delhi University, the crown prince of Nepal was staying in the hostel. He and his cronies never came to eat at our dining hall when the African students were around. They could not stand the way the ‘black Africans’ ate their food. They used to enter the hall only after the African students had left. I seriously think that we have to drastically change our attitude to ‘colour consciousness’ before we start criticising the Australians for their ‘racist’ attacks on our students.