New Delhi: Commercial cinema, world of advertising or even your next door neighbour will not stop from commenting if someone dusky walks by!
 

Colourism, The Most Ignored -Ism In Asia: 

Colourism is a global form of discrimination, an attitude that prefers lighter skin tones to darker ones, and considers those with naturally darker skin less desirable. It is so deep rooted that people don’t even realize that they are biased towards those who are dark skinned, once said Fatima Lodhi, a 27-year-old activist from Pakistan; with an aim to fight this evil of colourism when she started the Dark is Divine campaign years back. Personally, Fatima too was judged by people around her with comments like ‘Let’s paint her white’.

The campaign is a part of a bigger initiative called Women of Worth (WOW) that has crossed various boundaries and has taken the message of equality to people, irrespective of their skin tones, across various cultures, nationalities, races and ethnicity.

In Asia and particularly in South Asian societies those with dark complexions—lived much more difficult lives due to colorism.Since decades, fair skin is considered an ambassador of beauty. This perception has created social inequality and inferiority complexes amongst many that provide a healthy market for beauty products (that promise to tone and lighten skin, overnight). Even the number of beauty salons promising to make you white with their facials and skin polishing techniques is increasing like anything.

Well, every person has a story to share. We are the protagonists of our lives, just like the hero or heroine who are dealing with circumstances, unwanted situations and realities of this world but we have to stand up against all forms of media messaging and cultural practices where this bias is endorsed in any way.”

Although, we speak of religious equality and human rights where the first most important right is that we should respect each other for who we are and not how we look but however, we somewhere has failed to provide this respect to each other.

In a country where majority is obsessed with fair skin, it is perhaps no wonder that Bollywood has still not managed to steer away from racism. Time and again, dusky actresses — and actors too — in Bollywood have faced the brunt of this racism, even though internationally, dark-skinned celebrities have done well for themselves. 

While our media cries foul over Bollywood actors facing racism in the West, innumerable untold tales of racism remain waiting to be exposed in Bollywood itself. 

BollywoodHides Innumerable Tales Of Racism

Be it off-screen or onscreen, be it comments, lyrics of songs, story line or dialogues in films, racism has raised its ugly head in Bollywood on several occasions and it continues to do so.

For example, in the film, Fashion, a drug-addled Priyanka Chopra is shown to become aware of her character’s breakdown when she finds herself in bed with an African American but never mind her initial love affairs with her boss and her colleague.

Even songs like, “Gore rang penaitanagumaankar-
Gora rang do din mein dhal jaayega” and “Ham Kale HaiTohKya
HuwaDilwaleHai”; somewhere reflects Industry mindset of Racism. 

Similarly, celebrities comments on each other’s look and there was many such incidents like where Kareena Kapoor apparently described Bipasha Basu as a ‘kali billi’ (black cat), referring to Basu’s dusky complexion. 

 
National award-winning actress, Usha Jadhav, too has faced problems due to her skin colour. Many producers refused to cast her because of the colour of her skin. “They’d say that they want a fair girl to play the heroine,” she told.
 
Freida Pinto for that matterwas once upon a time rejected in Bollywood during her modelling days because of her skin tone. 
Not only Actresses, actors also faced criticism based on their looks and complexion. Manoj Bajpai, despite giving his impressive performance in Zubeida, faced this when a critic told him that he didn’t look anything like a prince in the film.
 
Even, the filmmaker Anand Rai’s decision to cast Dhanush in his film, Raanjhanaa, was met with scepticism. He was told that the hero has to fair and good-looking as that is what the audiences want today.
 
Recently Nawazuddin Siddiqui slammed the industry's obsession with white skin when Rishi Kapoor had said, 'You (Siddiqui) haven't done it (running around trees) in your life; neither will you get a chance to do it. And you aren't capable of doing it either. You don't have the image; you don't have the talent.' Clearly, Kapoor was alluding to Siddiqui's unconventional looks.

Even, the director for his upcoming film Babumoshai Bandookbaaz had told a daily that, "We can't cast fair and handsome people with Nawaz. It would look so weird. You have to take people with distinct features and personalities when pairing them with him." 

Siddiqui then, brought up deep-rooted prejudice for fair skin in the film industry and revealed that in his initial phase of career, people in Industry told him that, “We can’t take you as otherwise we have to put extra light to make you visible because you are dark.” 
 
After that a few Bollywood celebrities have extended their support to Nawazuddin and said that not only the film industry, but racism happens all over India, our matrimonial columns till date have a mention of skin colour and be it films, television, magazines, hoardings and ads; everywhere we have ‘fair’ people, in a country that is largely dark.

This isn’t to say that Bollywood hasn’t become better at accepting and even integrating darker shades of beauty into their fraternity because wheneverybody has been busy talking about nepotism and racism; Actor Kajol and director SoundaryaRajinikanth, showed no qualms in sharing their perspective on the issues. 

She quoted that, “Our film industry is one of those awesomely amazing places where we actually are truly multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-everything. It doesn’t really matter which religion, colour, creed, race you come from. The only thing that works in the industry is your talent and hardwork. I believe that of the greats like – Dilip Kumar, Shyam Benegal or for that matter even Rajinikanth.” 

Mahesh Bhatt once commented, “Our minds are coloured by the racism that was practised by the British during their rule in India, and it takes years to unshackle oneself from this slave mentality. We may have won political freedom, but socially, we are still slaves to such a backward mindset.”

It’s no secret that there is an underlying color chart hierarchy in India and the subcontinent, that isn’t just prevalent just in India but even other parts of the world.But at least, even if you’re dark, you can say: “Hum kaale hain to kyaa hua, dilwaale hain.”

References: 
www.mid-day.com
www.scoopwhoop.com
www.quora.com
http://www.news18.com