A Campaign to Fight India

This TV commercial promotes a skin-whitening cream.

The advert feature famous Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan... suggesting that the cream will make you look more beautiful.

There are many commercials like this, endorsed by popular Bollywood stars or famous cricket players.

30-year-old Maloti Murmu believes in such products. She has been using skin-whitening cream for a couple of years.

“My skin is dark. And I have suffered a lot because of this. My fair-skin girlfriends are all married. I feel so unlucky. My marriage has been put off. That’s why I’m using this product to make my skin look better. If my skin becomes fair, I will look more beautiful... my life will get better.”

In 2010, market researchers AC Nielsen said that the market for India’s skin-whitening products was worth more than 400 million US dollars.

Madan Sen runs a grocery store in the suburbs of Kolkata, selling many skin-whitening products.

“My customers come from all age groups; pre-teen girls to middle-aged women. But most of my customers are unmarried women. Some men also buy the product. Everyone wants to look fair.”

And sales are growing at a rate of nearly 20% a year, boosted by advertisements in various media.

Advertisements like this are bombarding Indians with the idea that fair skin is associated with high caste status or eligibility for marriage....

... that success and beauty are determined by skin colour.

Domestic worker Reena Haldar feels discriminated against because of her dark skin.

“My name is Reena. But many people in my area derogatorily call me ‘Kali’, meaning black, because my skin is dark. In our society, if you are dark-skinned you have to put up with lots of unhappiness and humiliation. I think God has punished me by making my skin dark.”

Now an NGO is trying to change this with a campaign called “Dark and Beautiful”.

It was launched last year by a group called Women of Worth, explains its director Kavitha Emmanuel.

“In our interaction with young women, with students and even with children we have seen how skin colour bias has affected people, it has affected children. Their level of confidence goes down, they have self-esteem issues and that’s when we realized if nobody is going to talk about it, we just have to.  We just have to bring it out in the open. And let people be loved for who they are, primarily.” 

The campaign is mostly online, aiming to encourage people not to discriminate against others because of their skin colour.

It also appeals to public figures to stop endorsing skin-whitening products and to regulate the advertisement of such products.

Film star Nandita Das is a strong supporter of the campaign.
 
“You are made to feel that you will not reach anywhere, because you have dark skin; your choices are limited. There are lots of young girls who don’t even apply for many things because they feel they don’t have the opportunity. I mean fair women just the fact they are fair have just so much many more opportunities. Does it not seem like a completely racist thing?"

But Anjali Monteiro, cultural study expert from the Tata Institute of Social Science, says it’s going to be a battle.

“I certainly don’t think that either banning fairness creams or trying to regulate ads is going to do a great deal to change things. The very construct of beauty has to do with relationships of power. Probably, if Africa had colonized the world then dark would have been beautiful rather than fair would have been beautiful.”

The campaign was an eye-opener for high school student Abhipsa Choudhury.

She believes more people should support the campaign.

“I read about the campaign in a newspaper. I feel very strongly that it’s extremely unfair to look down upon someone just  because he or she has dark skin. I believe that skin-whitening products on the market are pushing up this level of discrimination. People should boycott all skin-whitening creams. I have pledged not to use any skin-whitening products myself.”