Fair is Lovely....

Or is it? This topic was suggested by my "someone special" the other day in casual conversation......and i felt compelled to write on it...thanks sreya! There has been a huge outburst in the press lately about the "racist" attacks on Indians down under....and rightly so. But contrary to the shock expressed by most of us, I am not at all surprised by these outbreaks....rather, irrespective of the nature of motivation behind these attacks, certain things should be put in perspective: that is a nation with a marked history of racism against the aborigines, an aggressive culture inherited from convicted forefathers of the British empire (just historical facts....no offense to Australians, please!), but most importantly a seemingly developed society which always had an under-current of unemployment and anguish, that was inflamed by the Australian education industry (read as universities) taking hundreds of Indian students, trying to fulfill the "foreign quality eduction dream", only to land up often in average universities with no scholarship!

But one thing that did surprise me, as an Indian, was how we react to such atrocities outside our soil, but rarely ever introspect about the pathetic "white is right" colonial hangover/attitude that we shamelessly portray in this country! Don't agree? Well friends, let's stand in front of the mirror for once and ask ourselves:
Why is India (not China or Brazil or whole of Africa)the largest market for fairness creams in the world? Don't the "x & y" commercials on TV smell of racist undertones? Isn't "gori" or even "gora" (nowadays) silently attributed a hierarchically higher stature in society or marriage? Don't we know what happens in the air-hostess interviews of some of the Indian airline companies? Do we stop to think before calling certain names to darker-skinned people from Southern India or people with mongoloid features from the North East?

Even after 63 years of independance, we still breed in our minds a color complex even towards fellow Indians.....still acutely lack in self-confidence as a society, as a nation....we still hanker for the "white man's appreciation"......and hypocritically feel a quiet sense of appreciation to be complemented on our skin color......racism is not only the violent "Mississippi burning" or " a Melbourne stabbing" - it is also the "...gori gori ..." Bollywood songs and the "Girl, fair, slim ..." narrowly defined beauty in our matrimonial ads!

I believe that racism breeds racism.....while a fair skin breeds it believing in its misplaced superiority, a darker skin also does the same by believing that the fair skin is right! So let us stand for what is right......by taking small steps in our everyday interactions with people.......from peer groups to job desks....let us be aware of what WE, as citizens of the country of Gandhi, DONT WANT TO BE KNOWN AS ... and more importantly, LETS ACTUALLY NOT BE THAT!

"On an altar of prejudice we crucify our own, yet the blood of all children is the color of God." - Don Williams, Jr (American poet and novelist)