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| United Color of Benetton's Campaign against color racism |
A few days ago, while I was working, my 3-year old son, Ahaan, appeared from near my elbow. A little while ago I had settled him with his coloring book and asked him to color the skin color of a little boy in a light peach color. It looked to me like he had been doing some thinking. He had a strange question mark on his face. This was followed by a toothy smirk. A delightful grin. I felt something was on his mind, for which he needed immediate solution for. We know profound questions from 3-year olds don't wait for suitable moments. Therefore kids must bring their questions to administering adult.
"Mamma, I want to ask you something."
"Yes, Ahaan - ask," I inevitably mouthed as the e-mails
I was responding to continued to detain my full attention.
"Mama," the inspired little voice chipped. "Why
are some people dark and some fair. Why aren’t all people have the same skin
color?"
Through the intense focus on my exhaustively boring e-mails,
I could hear the distinctive ring of acuity springing from a child at elbow
height. It's almost felt like someone in another world is trying to awaken you
to reality. A few days back I recall reprimanding Ahaan for not letting our new
( dark skinned ) maid do any of his work, because he felt she was too dark and
had probably not washed her hands.
"Ahaan, my boy, I guess you have solved the global racism
problem with that statement," I said to him with a sigh.
However, I could only stop and smile. That was it! The sheer
sardonicism of racism by skin color: Don’t we all have the same color deep down?
We just have to find it. This topic has been very close to my heart and in a
volatile way. The Indian matrimonial ads which seek “fair skinned bride” or the
hoax of “Fair and Lovely “ creams – “jo 10 din main gora bana de”. Color racism is something that has always enraged
me. How can anyone judge a human being’s goodness on basis of skin color? Is
that even true? Is that even realistic? Believe it or not, I have known people
who do not like “black’ dogs, who advocate not eating eggplant or drinking cola
during pregnancy, else you want your child to be black!
Why is being a dark skinned human being and specially a
darker colored girl such a bad thing in
Indian society? Why are we Indians so obsessed with fair skin? Why does being
dark diminish what we primarily view as beauty?
Our upbringing has “trained” us what beauty is but we have not been permitted
to comprehend it in its profoundness. I have known many Indian men who awkwardly
have often passed on a girl just because she was “too dark” inspite of a
workable chemistry between them. I often hear the phrase “She is so dark? Yet
she is pretty?!”. Reasonably, we all
have physical qualities that we like in members of the opposite sex—it could be
their smile, hair color, and certain kind of face/body structure, etc.----it’s normal.
But we cannot use discrimination merely on the basis of the skin color to certify
a human being’s worth, can we? We ought to start authenticating beauty for what
it is and uplift ourselves.
I am glad Ahaan had the sensibility to ask this question to
me. A child will amaze you with a raw diamond, a buried gem sort of a moment
that keeps you coming back for more.
Every now and then, from a child’s world, they will raise a magnifying
glass into the world of adults to look at what's above. And trust me - When
they do ,It's like getting a reality check from the kingdom of innocence.
“Yes Ahaan, we are all the same color from within, actually
my son. Laundry is the only thing that should actually be separated by color!”.
The insight of a 3-year old.
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