If you’ve been following the game of cricket, you’ve probably heard of the Harbhajan-Symonds controversy. Apparently, Harbhajan Singh called Andrew Symonds a “monkey”, and he took racial offense to that. Is monkey a racial slur? that’s debatable. Anyways, Harbhajan was fined by the match referee for the racial slur, and this resulted in a media frenzy here in India. This snowballed into an issue of national pride with the BCCI threatening an end to the tour.

What has hurt the pride of the nation more than anything else, is that an Indian player was labelled a racist. After all, we don’t want to be associated with racism, certainly not India, the most racially tolerant country …or are we?

How can we call ourselves “not racial” when we promote the fair or light skin color as being virtuous and desirable. How often do we come across advertisements that promote fair skin as being superior, and one that fetches you your dream job, that makes you attractive? Sadly, these ads are getting more frequent and bolder in their message.

It started off with the Fair and Lovely cream by HLL (now HUL – Hindustan Unilever Limited) for women, and with emotional persuasion in their marketing  they pulled it off, making it a successul brand and finding its way into the hand-bags of several million unsuspecting women. To these women fair skin meant a transition into better acceptance, and being more attractive.  The success of Fair and Lovely spawned a douzen other me too brands, including Fairever, Fair and Handsome (the variant for men), Nivia Visage and God knows how many more.

This predilection for fair skin is apparent all across the Indian society. Matrimonial ads in newspapers are filled with captions that read “Fair and Handsome man looking for bride…”. In the glamour industry, fair skinned is considered a big asset and it isn’t unusual to find fair skinned actors and models in the overwhelming majority.

Some would argue that our obsession with the fair skin is intrinsic to our society, or maybe a residue of the British colonial legacy, one of the white English sahib and the brown Indian slave. That may be the case to an extent, but marketers and corporates have a bigger share in the crime, that of fuelling this obsession. It is no secret that good marketing and sales strategies can sell a comb to a bald man and when done effectively, marketing is like mass propaganda. Take for instance, the hugely popular Indian actor, Shahrukh Khan proclaiming shamelessly in an ad “Mard ho ke Ladkiyon waali Fairness cream kyon?” loosely translated as why use a women’s fairness cream when you are a man. Which also means, that fairness creams are now available for men, so you don’t have to use a woman’s.

Which takes me to the next point, where are all the advertisement regulatory bodies and watchdogs of the society? for a country that raises a hue and cry over everything, this is surprisingly low on the radar.

Racism is an ugly multiheaded serpent, that reared its head over the past and caused considerable grief and shame to humanity.  Indeed, racism is derogatory and taken as a serious offense in today’s society – and rightly so.

We musn’t forget that calibre and capability of an individual is measured not by appearance or the skin color. In a country where two great deities Lord Siva and Lord Krishna, the great emperor Asoka, the father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi were dark skinned, it is suprising that we still fall prey to the lure of  light skin color.