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Sometime in December, a day or two before Christmas 2015, our daughter came up to me and my wife, and said she wants a pink bicycle for her next birthday. My spouse and I looked at each other — you know, the “We need to talk with her” kind of code look that parents have — and asked her what made her pick that particular colour. “I want pink because all my friends have pink, and XXX told me that pink is the colour for girls and blue is for boys.”
My wife and I spoke to Aanya for close to half an hour on how pink is not a “girl colour” and why blue is not for boys alone. To distract her, I even showed her a colour chart on my iPhone, hoping she would pick any colour but pink. No go. She was adamant on pink. It was past 11 p.m., so we left it at that and, like most parents past 11 p.m., decided to sweep it under the carpet for that night at least. Like most precocious kids, she has elephantine memory, and it is only a matter of time before she reiterates that demand. Seemingly, for her, pink is indeed the colour for girls, and blue for boys.
It is now hardwired via peer pressure.
I remembered this incident when news began to break about a vicious mob attack on a Tanzanian woman in Bengaluru. The 21-year-old business administration student was passing by a locality with her friends in a car when >she was stopped by a mob, pulled out, beaten up and stripped. Her male friend, who tried to help her, met with a similar fate, except that his clothes remained intact. A passerby who saw this and >tried to help the girl by offering his T-shirt, was confronted, too. The woman tried to escape by boarding a bus, but the passengers pushed her back onto the street where she was beaten again. Her car was then set on fire.
The reason for this mob violence was that, 35 minutes prior, a male student of Sudanese origin had run over a woman in that area and killed her. The crowd, which had gathered following the accident, decided that justice can be delivered only via mob violence, and for some reason, decided to pick on the Tanzanian girl.
Mobs have no rationale, so nobody thought twice before assaulting her. She looked “African” enough. Nobody thought of asking her whether she is the same person who ran over the old woman. Nobody thought of handing her over to the police as a suspect in the accident death, even though they were standing right there. Nobody stopped to ask her what nationality she was. Nobody stopped to ask why two countries, divided by 3,500-plus kilometres of land and other social, political and demographic factors, should be equated with one another at all. Nobody asked anything. Both were black and, so, both must be the same.
The reason for this violence is not difficult to explain: Indians, like many communities and races around the world, are inherently racist. We don’t like dark skin, and the notion of “fair is beautiful and superior” is drilled into us from childhood. A hugely popular Marathi song goes: “ >Gori gori paan, fulasarkhi chhaan, dada mala ek vahini aan [Extremely fair and as beautiful as a flower, O Elder brother, get me a sister-in-law like that]".
This song is so popular in Maharashtra that Marathi community members even trolled me on Twitter when I said this song is a symptom of everyday racism. It may not be “racist” in the traditional sense of the word, but it has played an enormous role in hardcoding the “fair is beautiful” notion among several generations of children. It’s not going to be easy to let go.
Not just in Marathi, these ditties are popular among several other ethnicities in India.
As we grow up, this idea is perpetuated by advertisements and mass media representations. Mehmood, one of Bollywood’s greatest comedians, once sang, ‘ >Hum kaale hain toh kya hua, dilwale hain [So what if I am dark-skinned, I am large-hearted]’, while wooing Helen in a dream sequence in the famous suspense movie Gumnaam . Social acceptance of dark-skinned people is an uphill task. One of the reasons Dalits (earlier branded “untouchables” and who, in the “Varna” system, are graded even below Shudras) were not accepted was because of the colour of their skin. They were given the menial tasks of cleaning sewers or latrines by the superior castes such as Brahmins and Kshatriyas.
It is no surprise then, that, in various communities, fair-skinned people are usually termed superior. It is so ingrained that we don't even feel it is racist. Everyday racism includes sentences such as, “Look at that fair girl, she is so beautiful”. Or, “See that dark man standing in the corner? Isn’t he creepy?”
A boss at a news meeting in a former company once referred to a colleague of ours and told us he must be bad because “he's so black, no?” The said reporter was easily our best entertainment reporter then.
In the early 1990s, a family friend fell in love with an American woman while on deputation for a software company. When they decided to get married, he thought he would bring her to India and introduce her to his parents. They landed at Mumbai airport where the parents and a few relatives were waiting for him and his American bride. Little did they know that his fiancée was African-American. When they saw her exiting the airport, the friend’s mother fainted.
Martin Luther King, Jr. put it eloquently: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” It is this generation's responsibility to bend it quickly.
Kim Barrington Narisetti came to India when her husband Raju Narisetti was appointed editor of Mint newspaper in New Delhi. >This is her experience . It is no different from my friend’s wife, who, incidentally, never returned to India.
We may deny it all we want, but our racism is ingrained.
It is ironic, because we are a country with predominantly brown- and black-skinned people. Yet, we look down upon Africans, who are, well, predominantly black. It is as if brown skin is one level above black skin.
My father, when he was alive, refused to let go of the term “Negro” for any person of African origin. Mohammed Ali was a boxer he loved, but he was forever a “Negro”. He hated the West Indian cricket team of the 1970s and the 1980s because they beat the hell out of India, but he never stopped referring them as “Negroes”. I even grew up thinking it is the accurate way to describe dark-skinned people. Later, as a teenager, I would often fight with him, but to no avail. I gave up.
To be fair to my father, he was not alone. Even now, a lot of people of his generation refer to African-origin people as Negroes.
In my community (Konkanis from North Kanara region of Karnataka), when mothers look for brides for their sons, they want “ Gori Gomti [Fair, Beautiful]” girls. I know of no Indian parent who has asked for a bride who is not fair.
Admittedly, judging someone by the colour of their skin is not an exclusively Indian trait. America is going through an upheaval of sorts on this issue at present. The ‘ >Black Lives Matter ’ movement is a glaring example of the black-white cleavage in American society.
If the Syrian and Syrian-related migration had not affected Europe, the predominant theme in immigration and diversity today would still have been about the proliferation of blacks in a white-dominated society. Right-wing parties are making Islamism their election theme across developed nations such as France, Great Britain, Australia, and Germany. In a previous generation, that central theme was Blacks.
India has both signed and ratified the >International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in 1968. This is a UN body which tries to end all forms racial discrimination, and is part of the world organisation’s human rights mandate. But legislation has not been able to uproot the bigotry we have become used to. Neither can we rely on its efficacy. The only way to change this is to change individual mindsets. That’s the tough part.
The battle for equality of the colour of the skin is going to be a long one, and it is going to be hard. Yet, we must fight it. We owe it to not only the Tanzanian woman in Bengaluru, but also to the world at large and to our children.
Martin Luther King, Jr. put it eloquently: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but >it bends towards justice .” It is this generation's responsibility to bend it quickly.
As for the pink bike, my daughter is in for a surprise for her next birthday.
