Why are indians dark

She would imitate, copy, repeat everything her mother would do. Even sneakily wear her heels, red lipstick, wrap herself in a make shift dupatta saree. She would detest her brown skin, especially when neighbours would pass comment saying that brown baby girl did not look anything like her mother.

It would totally piss her off. She would not step out in the sun and apply many bad fair skin product just to match her fair skinned mother. They all are very pretty. Am I beautiful, Maa? Since then she never ever tried to hide or run because she knew her mum is always by her side. I was the fortunate brown baby girl. Most of the times we adults forget that we are influential. Kids look at us - they learn, they are blind followers and the ones who are highly influenced by society.

But it has never stopped me from doing anything. As a child I was told to do many things, including bleach my face as a 9-year-old! I have faced several funny read: hurtful, for a teenager instances, but I, at this point, can only remember one that was also very embarrassing that I recall.

Staff room gossips played a very important role for us students in school. I was 12 years old, new to the city, and had very few friends still persists. But obviously someone had to, so my teachers did. The whole staff room did. There were unknown teachers, peons and random people walking in involved in the conversation with me in the centre. I laughed, there was silence. I feel more than funny anecdotes for any dark skinned woman, there will be anger, embarrassment, shame and wonder of why they are born with a colour so demeaning.

The reasoning turns out to be my skin colour, the most unimportant subject in the universe. Unlearning is difficult for everyone but am I in a better if not good place with my body and skin colour? Under such circumstances, I sometimes would try to use these absurd fairness remedies! So there was I, a dark-skinned girl who hated her existence. But everything around me changed the day I realised I was pretty, just the way I am.

They not only thought I was pretty, but started envying my skin colour. I only wish the year-old me had known this, that she was pretty then also and she should not have bothered about what others thought.

And remember. The day you start believing you are pretty, people will follow suit. Beauty comes from within. Never waste time in becoming someone who you are not, rather just embrace and love yourself, learn new things and life will change for the better. Now that we have that out of the way, my skin color was literally my only identification when I was a little girl. I think the stinky after-bath smells aside, the one thing that would actually get to me was my well-meaning mother assuring me that she loved me despite my colour, because how else do you teach a pre-teen self worth?

Until I was around 13, I was always convinced my skin color was an affliction. A disease, that I would have to come on top of, to get literally achieve anything of note. Cultural Exposure: So the thing with our melanin obsessed culture, is that we never do celebrate women of color.

Thankfully, I took to reading very early. I learnt of a world that existed outside of our colonial obsession. I learnt that beauty was multi-faceted. There was no one way to be beautiful. There are beautiful dark women, just like there are beautiful fair women.

Skin color could be a matter of preference and conditioning, sure! All of which, you cultivate and grow into. Giving No Fucks: This was a derivative of the first, but really, they go hand-in-hand. And I felt good, doing it. When I felt good, it showed. You life is literally your show on the road.

The world is waiting on signals from you. Fall in love with yourself, the world is chickenshit, it will follow suit. Cruel words, no matter how well-intentioned, do sting.

But one thing one must always remember myself included is that you owe it to yourself to rise above. You owe it to yourself to live the life you want to lead- blonde hair, bright lipsticks, short skirts- go for it! Throw back your head and do exactly what you want to. No doubt that lighter skin is something that is celebrated hugely. Up until now I was never comfortable with my skin, my body; I was always scrutinised for being dark. Obviously being a child I kind of did what I was told.

But it made me turn in on myself, disliking my complexion, making me think that I should be light skinned to be beautiful. To be normal. During and after the protests roiling at least three continents, statues associated with colonialism and the slave trade have been toppled, schools and universities have removed the names of founders who are suddenly in disgrace, and businesses all over the world have discovered racist overtones in the names or declared benefits of their products.

It is the only type of racism India understands and tolerates, and it predates Europe and America and Western civilisation itself. We Indians began to practise it years ago, when we chose the word varna , one of whose meanings is colour, for the four social classes into which we divided society in our oldest extant scripture, the Rig Veda , which we composed as early BCE.

Colour-based discrimination in India is nuanced. In the town in Bihar where I spent my childhood, mothers console dark-skinned children by pointing out that Ram and Krishna were both dark. Indeed, Krishna was the victim of a sort of racism long before the West came by it. But this offers little consolation to the hopelessly dark child. For chocolate-browns, India offers some channels for subterfuge. A bit of flair and chutzpah allows them to pass, under flattering lights and from some angles, as wheatish, which is how their families describe them in matrimonial ads.

For the wheatish, life bubbles with greater hope, providing cosmetic solutions and carefully chosen wardrobe hues that move the skin tone toward milky-white, but it is for the milky-white and those who look like white foreigners that India opens her arms.

These humans we make into film stars. When they take selfies with us, glistening in their whiteness against a sea of dark faces, we are overjoyed. When they lead large troupes in dance sequences in Bollywood films, we delight in how they stand out in their light skin against the backup dancers. Now, one might ask: why does India put up with an oppressive system in which nearly the whole population is at the receiving end?

In other words, we consider ourselves the beneficiaries of colour discrimination, not its victims. This image of ourselves is not the result of marketing hyperbole, as in a matrimonial ad that sells a chocolate-brown bride as wheatish.

Rather, it is born out of sincere conviction, shaken only occasionally by visual evidence.