Indian campaign aims to put prejudice beyond the pale
Campaign out to educate young who see lighter skin as more beautiful and socially accepted
Indian culture dictates that fair skin equates to beauty and high social status, spurring a huge market for skin lightening products. But campaigners now hope that such attitudes will fade into history.
The organisers of the "Dark and Beautiful" campaign say they want to make young Indians aware of the racism they say is inherent in such beliefs.
The campaign, organised by Women of Worth, a group in Chennai, has received a boost through well-known actress Nandita Das agreeing to lend her face to the campaign's poster.
Das, who says she is weary of being defined in every press interview she gives by the relatively dark colour of her skin - "dusky" is the favoured adjective - has experienced the Indian prejudice against dark skin from childhood.
"People have asked me 'how can you be so confident when you are so dark?' or 'we know you don't like light make-up but you are playing an upper middle class character so please understand'. Had it not been for my parents, I would have grown up believing I was not good enough," said Das.
With her support for the campaign, Das finds herself pitted against Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan, who features in ads for "Fair and Handsome" skin lightening cream.
WoW founder Kavitha Emmanuel says that an online petition against skin lightening has gained 6,500 signatures. When momentum for the petition grows, she said she will ask Khan to stop appearing in the commercials. "People like him have so much power to influence people's attitudes and he is using that power to propagate the view that only fair skin is attractive," said Emmanuel.
One supporter of the campaign said online: "I love your films but shame on you Shah Rukh for peddling such a terrible idea."
Another said: "Advertising for fairness creams is outright racism. I cannot believe that we as Indians follow such racism proudly, day in, day out."
Emmanuel says that in the schools and colleges in south India where she helps to create awareness about skin prejudice, young minds are opening up.
"You have to catch them early. I've seen kindergarten children saying they used a particular soap but their face still didn't become white. Their confidence is badly affected," she said.
WoW's work is undermined when these children then see ads such as the latest one by Khan, in which he is shown throwing a tube of Fair and Handsome to a young fan. In the next scene, the boy's skin grows whiter, his smile brightens and his hopes rise.
New Delhi advertising executive Bindu Nayar says it is sad that India has to be told that "dark is beautiful", 40 years after the cultural movement Black is Beautiful in the US. "You know, Martin Luther King's famous sentence about hoping his children will be judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character has never found many takers here," she said.
