Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Indians too are colour-conscious' that was published in Newsband

Indians too are colour-conscious

Nina Davuluri who is of Indian origin was crowned Miss America. The United States gave free vent to their prejudice on social media networks like Twitter. Some made offensive remarks about the colour of her skin.

But why blame the Americans only? Ms Davuluri could not have made it past the qualifying rounds of a beauty contest in India. The dark complexioned 24-year-old would not have stood a chance.

We should appreciate the judgement of the American jury to have given her the title, and hence full marks to America for that. Had she been in India, far from entering a beauty contest, it is more likely that Ms Davuluri would have grown up hearing mostly disparaging remarks about the colour of her skin. Here she would have become a person with low self-esteem and few friends. There was never a time when someone with Ms Davuluri’s skin tone won a beauty crown in India.

In the film industry, which also goes by the same beauty standard, the number of dark actors, female or male, can be counted on two hands with fingers to spare. The truth is that the Indian idea of beauty is not very different from the imagined ideal of ‘Ms America’ that those racist hate-tweeters in the U.S hold dear: white or nothing.

A black Indian is teased by being called "African" as a dismissive slur by other Indians who foolishly believe that dark is ugly. You can never imagine yourself waking up one day just to find a girl of black color and African descent to have won Miss India title. Many hypocritical Indians would feel betrayed pretending she doesn't represent India.

This obsession with color is deeply ingrained in our Indian blood. The whooping crores of business of cosmetic industry in our country speaks volumes about this. With all sanity of mind, let us appreciate Nina Davuluri for her talent and her sober reaction towards the racial viles. Let the triviality take the backstage in the interest of deserving talent and justful efforts.

Another thing is that if a beauty contest is the reason by which you judge the broadmindedness or multiculturalism of a society, clearly the basic definition of the concept comes under question. One also needs to give some thought to the reason why such contests are organized in the first place. If it is to present a woman as a role model for the masses, clearly we could have better ways to judge then selecting a girl in a fake setting by the so called fashion industry "leaders", who millions of teenage girls look up to.

Indians generally equate fairness to beauty and there is even a typical stereotyping of South Indians as dark skinned by those from the North. That makes one think of the proverb 'pot calling the kettle black'.

There is a case of an Indian man of dark complexion having travelled around the world. The strange thing is that he faced discrimination for skin colour only in India. We express outrage over another country's racist comments, conveniently forgetting our own deeply rooted obsession with skin color.