Last week, Giriraj Singh, Union Minister of State, Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, sent the media into a paroxysm of outrage by asking, rhetorically, whether the Congress would have accepted a Nigerian as its leader, had Rajiv Gandhi married a woman from that nation rather than from Italy. Given the extent of India’s colour prejudice, was the minister doing anything more than stating a fact, however crudely? He was undoubtedly wrong to suggest it was white skin alone that ensured Sonia Gandhi’s rise. Gandhi looks like someone who might conceivably be Indian, certainly in photographic images. She adopted saris early on, and learned to speak Hindi fluently, blending in more easily as a result. Even her name, which Indians can pronounce effortlessly, helped. Had she been named Cipriana, she might have struggled to gain acceptance. Yana Gupta comes to mind as a parallel in the world of modelling and films, someone not Indian, but close enough not to be viewed as entirely exotic or alien.
These nuances aside, it remains true that a Nigerian, even one who married a Gandhi, spoke Hindi fluently and had an easily pronounceable name, could never dream of heading an Indian political party or finding electoral success here.India’s political leaders since independence have been considerably lighter skinned than the population at large. I can’t think of a single Prime Minister from Jawaharlal Nehru to Narendra Modi who could be described as dark skinned, and I doubt if that’s a coincidence.
A Nigerian woman’s task would be that much harder because females face colour prejudice more strongly than men. The root of this is probably sexual dimorphism in complexion among humans. Skin colour evolved as a tussle between our need to absorb Vitamin D from the sun through our skin, and the opposing need to stave off the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation. Since the duration and strength of available sunlight falls considerably at higher latitudes, paler skin, which absorbs Vitamin D more efficiently, evolved rapidly in those climes. Women need more Vitamin D than men because it helps the absorption of calcium which is required in substantial quantities during pregnancy and lactation to ensure progeny grow with healthy skeletons. A small increase in skin cancer risk associated with lighter skin is more than balanced by a greater chance of producing viable children. As a result, women everywhere are on average a little fairer than men, leading to light skin being perceived as a feminine attribute, and valued more in females than males.
A debate with many shades
This is a biological account of the roots of one aspect of colour bias. Such explanations have been out of favour for decades, as biology has been supplanted by history, economics and sociology. The most common contemporary explanation for white-mindedness in India connects it with British imperialism. In a similar mode, Teresa Wiltz writes in the Guardian, “The colour struck thing is a global phenomenon, taking root wherever slavery or colonialism once reigned and where white Europeans were the ones in control.” Unfortunately, this doesn’t explain why women in nations like Thailand and Japan, which were never conquered in the imperialist era, are ardent users of skin whitening products.
Chetan Bhagat’s economistic argument that we value fair skin because nations peopled by whites tend to be richer also seems misguided given the data on fairness products. Bhagat is overly optimistic when he writes, “We also need to grow our economy and make our country rich so this sense of shame at ourselves goes away soon.” If it hasn’t happened in a country as rich (and as full of light-skinned people) as Japan, it’s hardly likely to happen in India purely as a consequence of affluence.
The idea that discrimination based on skin colour originates with colonialism is defeated not just by examples of non-colonised people sharing the prejudice, but also by the many examples of light skin being linked to beauty in Indian classical literature long before the imperialist epoch. Confronted with this evidence, historians tend to fall back on caste as the solution. The word for caste in Sanskrit is varna, meaning colour or complexion, and suggests a colour divide in the subcontinent millennia before imperialism. What, though of pre-colonial shade-ism outside the subcontinent? We’ve all heard the proverb about a leopard not being able to change its spots, but that’s just half the quote from Jeremiah 13: 23. The entire biblical sentence is, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.” The delightful tradition of Jeremiah continues in the hymns of Saint Ephrem of Syria dedicated to Thomas, the first missionary to visit India. Ephrem writes:
The sunburnt India thou hast made fair…
A tainted land of dark people thou hast purified…
More than snow and white linen
The dark bride of India thou hast made fair…
The crown of light has obliterated India’s darkened shades.
Syria had no varna, and yet Ephrem’s manner indicates that colour prejudice was common in that region in the fourth century of the Common Era.
Meanwhile in Nigeria
I can keep piling on examples from different lands and places. Take Nigeria, the country at the centre of the outrage cause by Giriraj Singh. Over three in four Nigerian women use bleach or other cosmetic products to lighten their skin. Across continents, and across time, a lighter skin tone is prized, and no economic theory or historical evidence comes close to explaining it.
To say a belief or tendency is universal and trans-historical is not to justify or condone it. I am as distressed as any liberal by India’s complexion bigotry, and infuriated by the growing dominance of white models in product advertising within India and Asia. However, neither the post-colonial nor the neo-liberal approaches address the core of the issue, as a result of which the solutions they proffer, whether “get over the Brit hangover and we’ll be okay”, or “get rich and we’ll be fine” are superficial and unworkable. The roots of the unfairness go far deeper than sociological accounts can dig. I can offer no solution myself, precisely because I recognise that truly confronting biases related to skin colour is less a walk in the park than a journey into the heart of darkness.
We welcome your comments at
letters@scroll.in.
These nuances aside, it remains true that a Nigerian, even one who married a Gandhi, spoke Hindi fluently and had an easily pronounceable name, could never dream of heading an Indian political party or finding electoral success here.India’s political leaders since independence have been considerably lighter skinned than the population at large. I can’t think of a single Prime Minister from Jawaharlal Nehru to Narendra Modi who could be described as dark skinned, and I doubt if that’s a coincidence.
A Nigerian woman’s task would be that much harder because females face colour prejudice more strongly than men. The root of this is probably sexual dimorphism in complexion among humans. Skin colour evolved as a tussle between our need to absorb Vitamin D from the sun through our skin, and the opposing need to stave off the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation. Since the duration and strength of available sunlight falls considerably at higher latitudes, paler skin, which absorbs Vitamin D more efficiently, evolved rapidly in those climes. Women need more Vitamin D than men because it helps the absorption of calcium which is required in substantial quantities during pregnancy and lactation to ensure progeny grow with healthy skeletons. A small increase in skin cancer risk associated with lighter skin is more than balanced by a greater chance of producing viable children. As a result, women everywhere are on average a little fairer than men, leading to light skin being perceived as a feminine attribute, and valued more in females than males.
A debate with many shades
This is a biological account of the roots of one aspect of colour bias. Such explanations have been out of favour for decades, as biology has been supplanted by history, economics and sociology. The most common contemporary explanation for white-mindedness in India connects it with British imperialism. In a similar mode, Teresa Wiltz writes in the Guardian, “The colour struck thing is a global phenomenon, taking root wherever slavery or colonialism once reigned and where white Europeans were the ones in control.” Unfortunately, this doesn’t explain why women in nations like Thailand and Japan, which were never conquered in the imperialist era, are ardent users of skin whitening products.
Chetan Bhagat’s economistic argument that we value fair skin because nations peopled by whites tend to be richer also seems misguided given the data on fairness products. Bhagat is overly optimistic when he writes, “We also need to grow our economy and make our country rich so this sense of shame at ourselves goes away soon.” If it hasn’t happened in a country as rich (and as full of light-skinned people) as Japan, it’s hardly likely to happen in India purely as a consequence of affluence.
The idea that discrimination based on skin colour originates with colonialism is defeated not just by examples of non-colonised people sharing the prejudice, but also by the many examples of light skin being linked to beauty in Indian classical literature long before the imperialist epoch. Confronted with this evidence, historians tend to fall back on caste as the solution. The word for caste in Sanskrit is varna, meaning colour or complexion, and suggests a colour divide in the subcontinent millennia before imperialism. What, though of pre-colonial shade-ism outside the subcontinent? We’ve all heard the proverb about a leopard not being able to change its spots, but that’s just half the quote from Jeremiah 13: 23. The entire biblical sentence is, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.” The delightful tradition of Jeremiah continues in the hymns of Saint Ephrem of Syria dedicated to Thomas, the first missionary to visit India. Ephrem writes:
The sunburnt India thou hast made fair…
A tainted land of dark people thou hast purified…
More than snow and white linen
The dark bride of India thou hast made fair…
The crown of light has obliterated India’s darkened shades.
Syria had no varna, and yet Ephrem’s manner indicates that colour prejudice was common in that region in the fourth century of the Common Era.
Meanwhile in Nigeria
I can keep piling on examples from different lands and places. Take Nigeria, the country at the centre of the outrage cause by Giriraj Singh. Over three in four Nigerian women use bleach or other cosmetic products to lighten their skin. Across continents, and across time, a lighter skin tone is prized, and no economic theory or historical evidence comes close to explaining it.
To say a belief or tendency is universal and trans-historical is not to justify or condone it. I am as distressed as any liberal by India’s complexion bigotry, and infuriated by the growing dominance of white models in product advertising within India and Asia. However, neither the post-colonial nor the neo-liberal approaches address the core of the issue, as a result of which the solutions they proffer, whether “get over the Brit hangover and we’ll be okay”, or “get rich and we’ll be fine” are superficial and unworkable. The roots of the unfairness go far deeper than sociological accounts can dig. I can offer no solution myself, precisely because I recognise that truly confronting biases related to skin colour is less a walk in the park than a journey into the heart of darkness.
