New Delhi, April 1: Union minister Giriraj Singh's comments on Sonia Gandhi's "white skin" have set off a social media debate on India's obsession with fairness, with the BJP leader trending on Twitter almost the entire day.
"Had Rajiv Gandhi married a Nigerian woman and if she was not a white-skinned woman, would the Congress have then accepted her leadership?" Giriraj is heard saying during a private chat made public through a sting.
Sociologist Dipankar Gupta is not surprised the comments have received worldwide attention. "The debate on complexion is a discourse essentially on the question of power," he said. "As long as the whites are in power, we will admire their aesthetics. This is not just an Indian problem, but a global phenomenon."
Gupta cited an example: "Before the whites ruled Africa, their features were found to be ugly and they were compared to albinos. Then when they came to power those very features became something that the other natives imbibed."
In Brazil, there are 147 known tones of skin colour, Gupta said, adding that similar grading is found in many other countries as well.
US President Barack Obama, too, faced comments about his skin colour during his first presidential campaign in 2008. Senate majority leader Harry Reid, praising his oratory skills before journalists, had said "that Obama, as a black candidate, could be successful thanks, in part, to his light-skinned appearance and speaking patterns with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one". He later apologised.
For Sonia, this is not the first time she has heard such comments.
While Giriraj was speaking off the record, author Patrick French wrote in his book on India in 2011: "Sonia Gandhi's appeal rested in part on iconography... Had she been of blonde, northern European or black African origin, she would never have been credible as an Indian leader. In a country where skin tone is noticed, this is part of her allure."
If Giriraj has said Sonia's leadership was accepted because of her skin colour, her party's chief minister in Goa, Laxmikant Parsekar, is alleged to have told a group of nurses from Kerala they should not sit on hunger strike in the sun because it will make them dark and they will "not find a good bridegroom".
Not long ago, Janata Dal (United) president Sharad Yadav, during a debate in Parliament, said: "The women of the south are dark but they are as beautiful...."
Earlier this year, British politician Rozanne Duncan was thrown out of the UK Independence Party after she said that she had a "problem" with "black people" while shooting a documentary.
Greek triple jumper Voula Papachristou was kicked out of her national team for mocking African migrants and expressing support for a far-Right political party on a social networking site in 2012.
Her offending message, referring to reports of mosquitoes carrying the West Nile virus in her home country, read: "With so many Africans in Greece, at least the West Nile mosquitoes will eat home made food!"
In the US, Reid's comments in 2008 had spurred anti-race campaigners to push for a public acknowledgment of what they called "a painful truth endemic to American political life".
Dozens of research studies since have shown that skin tone and other racial features play powerful roles in who gets ahead and who does not. "These factors regularly determine who gets hired, who gets convicted and who gets elected," wrote Shankar Vedantam, author of The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives, in a column.
Yagati Chinna Rao, associate professor at the Centre for the Study of Discrimination and Exclusion at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, pointed out that "in India, people are not happy with just your 'name'. They would always ask your surname, which would reveal the caste".
"The Indian government has never put caste and race as equivalent. I feel that they are in fact the same as the level of humiliation, marginalisation is similar. The caste and class identities are stronger than one's achievements. These comments are a reflection of that," Rao said.
Women's rights activist Kavita Krishnan called upon politicians to fight their women opponents politically.
"What's with our male politicians & their obsession with women's complexion? Sharad Yadav praised dark women. Goa CM and Giriraj Singh frown upon the dark. Singh says Sonia Gandhi is Congress president because she's fair. BJP Goa CM tells protesting nurses the sun will darken them and worsen marriage prospects. Giving Sharad Yadav competition! Why are these men so scared of dealing with women political opponents politically?!" she wrote on her Facebook page.
Professor Savita Singh, the founder-director of the School of Gender and Development Studies, Ignou, described Singh as a "deeply colonised mind." "The statement has multiple layers of perversity. It's not just racist, but reeks of pathological misogyny. It shows a psychological barrier that sees her as the superior white skinned woman who is not accessible to him," she said.
No comments:
Post a Comment