What color do you choose?

That India is a racist country is an undeniable fact. There is prejudice against dark skin color and color is associated... often unfairly... with caste, region, social strata and the list goes on. While dismissing racism as a Western evil, we participate in it everyday and in almost everything. Personally, I have faced a lot of snide remarks and insults because of my dark skin and even though I have slowly learned to accept it and take pride in it, there have been times when I have wished that I was different. There are so many wrong concepts ingrained in us that it is painful to think about and the worst part is that most people do not even realize that their obsession with fair complexion is something that should change. I wanted to point out some obvious situations which brings out this racist mentality in us so here goes:

• Idea that fair is lovely: The major problem is the idea that you are beautiful only if you are fair skinned. From matrimonial ads to commercials, everything in India will scream out to you that you should not be dark. I was in the fifth standard when I overheard some of my "friends" laughing about how dark and ugly I was. That was the first time it struck me that something was wrong in our mentality if even kids of the fifth standard mocked a person because of their complexion. If you open any random matrimonial section, everyone wants a bride who is "tall, fair and slim". Nothing else matters as long as you qualify in these three categories. I have heard people argue that the reason for this is so that their kids would also have fair skin... so let me get this straight... you are not only a biased generation, you are ensuring that the next generation is equally biased. My wedding makeup artist tried to make me "white" by putting on layers of compact powder when my sister intervened saying that we are not trying to hide anything so please wipe that right off. She didn't look too pleased, after all she was doing me a favor by trying to whiten me up!
• The caste divide: Another ridiculous thing that we Indians do is depict lower caste people as dark-skinned and upper castes as fair-skinned. Growing up, it was nothing out of the ordinary to see textbooks with pictures of pandits having lighter skin and manual laborers having dark complexion. It was not until I was older and read more about all these that I realized that the idea we have about complexion being an yardstick for measuring a person's worth is not only wrong, but extremely deep-rooted. This deep-seated prejudice has led to the idea that fair is beautiful and this continues to be propagated through movies, commercials and even school textbooks.
• The region bias: Being a land of diversity, we Indians could have embraced the rich diversity and learned from the innumerable cultures. Instead, it is alarming to observe the biased opinions that many of us hold towards the people who seem different from us. From the context of this article, one of the most common prejudice we have is when we say... "North Indians are fair skinned and South Indians are dark skinned". And then proceed to explain about Aryans and Dravidians not realizing that we are participating in stereotyping. 

Growing up in India, I have been reminded time and again about how being fair is better and how a tube of Fair and Lovely can get me a job even if I am not qualified for it! When I hear educated people say how they are eating certain things to ensure that their kids would be born with fair skin, I am afraid that we are carrying these prejudices to our next generation. Even though I have made peace with my skin color and realized that success has got nothing to do with your complexion (even though  Indian beauty ads will tell you otherwise), I wonder when we will stop shaming people because of the color they are born with?