Indians and their obsession with ‘Fair skin’ is a well known fact. We will do everything that makes us a shade lighter than our original skin colour. The concept of ‘Fair is pretty’ is so ingrained in our culture that almost every girl (*including me*) has grown up listening to sentences like- ‘Beta don’t go out to play in the afternoon’ , ‘Don’t drink chai’, ‘Apply besan ka ubtan (gramflour face mask)’ and what not.

Throughout my growing up years I (fair) and my sister (dusky) have faced the issue of skin colour discrimination- my sister had to face the negatives of it of course but luckily for us, our parents always held a strong hold against it. So even when relatives used to indirectly comment on our skin colour by saying – ‘finding a guy for Nandita won’t be a problem but you should be concerned about Ankita na? ‘ my parents had ways to shut them up!

But there are very few cases where people stand up against this obnoxious idea of skin colour discrimination instead of ignoring it upfront.

The mass influential industry in India i.e. Bollywood too seems to be somewhat inclined towards the ‘fair is lovely’ idea of female actors than dark skinned beauties. The appreciation of dusky beauties generally happen during some marketing campaigns or as a PR stunt for consumer goods and nothing more.

Talking of the entertainment industry, one actor who has always been vocal about her disagreement with these unfair standards of beauty and the general thinking around it is Nandita Das.

She recently released a video India’s Got Colour, which deals with the hypocrisy people face when they are not fair. Featuring amazing actors like Ali Fazal, Sayani Gupta, Shashank Arora, Patralekhaa Paul, Swara Bhasker, Kanwaljeet, Radhika Apte, Ratna Pathak Shah, Shweta Tripathi, Vikrant Massey, Tillotama Shome , Gul Panag, Divya Dutta and many others, this video aims at admonishing the audience against skin colour discrimination.

The tone of the video is catchy, youthful and relatable to the young generation. I feel if the idea is absorbed well by the youth only then can this issue face its end.

It is time that we see an end to the matrimonial ads like ‘wanted a fair, beautiful and homely girl’ and the idea of dusky women are OK to date but the wife has to be ‘gori’. Please STOP!

Share this video widely so that it changes the mindset of someone… somewhere.