The fairness' craze taken to a new level

The three main male deities worshipped by the multitudes in India are Shiva, Rama and Krishna. They all are dark-complexioned gods. But a growing number of dark-skinned (north) Indians want to be white and are looking for ways to have even their babies white and strong, in some cases “like the Germans”.

Movie idol Shah Rukh Khan has made his pile promoting a whitening cream, whatever it may be, for men. Now a medical NGO reportedly linked with the RSS is advocating a method by which it claims to help short and coloured parents to produce tall, white children, all in the national cause.

Kundan Lal Sehgal sang his heart out for the inconsolable gopi who pined for Krishna, the dark one. How she struggled with the fact that Krishna’s consort Radha had an unfair advantage over her love for the much-loved deity. Suno suno hey Krishan kaala. Only Sehgal could sing it with such feeling.

Or take the raag-based song composed by Sitar guru Ravi Shankar for the movie Anuradha: Sa’nvarey sa’nvarey, kaahey mohsey karo jora jori, also about the black Krishna’s flirting with a fair village belle. There are countless thumris and bhajans that revel in Krishna the dark one and his prowess with the flute. In Dhrupad compositions, Shiva’s ash-powdered face is depicted as a symbol of asceticism. He is, in fact, so dark that they conjure him in old miniatures and new calendar art in Prussian blue. In the imagination of the Avadhi poet Tulsidas, who composed the legend of Rama in verse during the Mughal period, the protagonist is of a dark complexion. A passage describes the exile of the trio from their kingdom of Ayodhya. Village women lining the way to the forest where they were headed wonder which of Sita’s male companions was her husband. “Sa’anvaro so pritam, gaur so devarva,” she replies demurely. The dark one was her sweetheart and the fair-skinned fellow was her husband’s brother.

Would the RSS-linked NGO Arogya Bharati’s mission amuse Rama, Krishna or Shiva or would it annoy them? Rama’s massive popularity with Indians has spurred post-colonial India’s right-wingers to exploit his reach in a racist project to turn the country into a nation of supremacists with a cultivated mistrust of other national cultures.

Recently, an English daily thus quoted the NGO’s prescription for dark complexioned parents desirous of a white child: “Three months of shuddhikaran (purification) for parents, intercourse at a time decided by planetary configurations, complete abstinence after the baby is conceived, and procedural and dietary regulations.”

According to the Garbh Vigyan Sanskar (Scientific Protocol for the Womb) project promoted by the RSS’ health wing, quoted by the English daily, the prescription would help a woman deliver an “uttam santati” — a perfect, “customised child”.

The strange Indian obsession with fair colour — or white skin — was captured vividly by the late journalist Vinod Mehta after he returned from London in the 1970s. The title of his piece, published in The Illustrated Weekly of India, if I remember right, was quaint: “Two transistors, one wife”. It was the story of Indian men returning home with a European wife and two transistor radios that were allowed by the customs to shore up Indira Gandhi’s “transistor revolution”.

It is of course not necessary that people desirous of white babies support the frequent racist run-ins with African students that Indians in Delhi have. The culture has roped in even Lord Krishna as professing a complex about the colour of his skin. “Radha kyun gori, maen kyun kaala?” Little Krishna is worried, virtually like the harried visitors to the RSS NGO, why Radha was fair and he black. Would Krishna really care?