“Racism,” typically, connotes a feeling of bias or hostility that white folks display toward blacks. Also, the prevalence of racism is generally ascribed to countries in the Western world.
Countries like India and China, among others, are believed to have no racism, simply because these nations have a relatively homogenous population as compared to the U.S. and EU nations.
Can Asian Indians have racist feelings towards others who are ‘browner’ than themselves? Sure, they can. Surprisingly, racism does exist in a country like India as well.
One need only look at the recent round of debates in the Indian media and blogosphere to realize that racism is rampant in India. In fact, it’s so deeply embedded in its social fabric that it goes unnoticed.
In a scathing op-ed piece in one of India’s premier magazines, an African-American doctoral student wrote that “racism in India is systematic” and that the climate promotes the disdain for dark skin.” He says that landlords wouldn‘t rent apartments to him, bouncers deny him entry into clubs and visa officers reject his visa applications, on account of his complexion.
Last year, a well-known Indian cricketer called Australian player Andrew Symonds a “monkey.” A ban was quickly imposed on him, but speedily retracted when the controversy died down.
Most Indians were reportedly surprised by all the fuss made over the comment. They didn’t understand why it was offensive to call somebody a “monkey” jocularly.
In the Indian subconscious, the color black is associated with anything impure, inferior, or dirty. Which is why, there is a huge demand for skin-lightening creams for both women and men. To paraphrase the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s famous quote; in India, to be fair, is glorious.
The weekend edition of every newspaper abounds with matrimonial classifieds announcing their quest for “fair” brides.
It could be argued that in a country where the population is predominantly brown-skinned, a powerful obsession with white skin shows a degree of unconscious self-loathing. After President Barrack Obama was elected to office, the Indian media got all fired up over Michelle Obama’s looks and speculated about whether a “real Afro-American” would have any sway over the American fashion industry.
India’s long-standing preference for fair skin, especially among higher castes, can be traced back to ancient Hindu mythology. India has retained its centuries-old immutable caste system, which consists of four major castes—the brahmins, the kshatriyas, the vaisyas and the sudras.
In an interesting twist on social coding, each caste was assigned a color, where higher-caste people were invariably expected to be fair-skinned. Those occupying the lower rungs of the caste ladder were expected to be darker.
Centuries later, when the British colonialists arrived in India, they further exploited this system by making the Indian elite increasingly identify cultural superiority with whiteness. This led to more loathing of their ‘brownness.’ Britain, historians explain, needed a class of intellectuals who were meek and docile in their attitude towards the British, but full of hatred towards their fellow citizens.
The frowning continued even after the British departed. If anything, India’s bias toward a light-skinned ruling class became more deep-rooted, and the earlier reigning class comprised mainly of Kashmiri brahmins, were revered since they looked more “European” and less Indian.
Indian entertainers have traditionally, whitewashed the issue of their country’s skin-color bias by advertising for skin-bleaching products. Last December, Bollywood beauty queen Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan went against the grain however, by refusing to bless fairness lotions.