Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of us all…

Saba Naqvi

Two incidents that should shake all right minded Indians is the attack on the Tanzanian woman student in Bangalore and the suicide of Hyderabad student Rohith Vemula. Let us have no doubt that we are among the most casteist and racist people in the world and both often overlap. The Sanskrit word Varna apparently translates into "colour", but I am not an expert on Sanskrit. 

But what I do have some experience of is the obsession with skin colour within Muslim clans. I would therefore argue that racism/casteism extends to all minorities within South Asia. In a large sprawling Muslim family, social hierarchies are to some extent determined by the colour of one's skin. From what I observed in my childhood, there was an entire part of the clan emanating from one village in Awadh who were not fair skinned. This I was told as a child was because some ancestors had performed nikaah with singing ladies who were not Saiyyeds and hence they delivered offspring that were not fair and lovely. True or false, I have not checked. I am just sharing the legends that families pass on. Who said Muslims were egalitarian? 

Indeed, some of the most liberal thinkers and radicals, emanating from my family, all operated in the zone of being fair skinned. They never really challenged their own Saiyyed existence and possibly internalized the belief, like Brahmins do, that they were preserving high culture and knowledge. They were too elegant (and self indulgent) to indulge in something as vulgar as commerce hence post zamindari abolition, they faded into what they would like to think of as genteel poverty, a process where some members of the family live off the generosity of other members.

Let me tell the tale of my uncle who passed away some years ago called Mushtaq Naqvi, a great friend of the poet known as Firaq Gorakhpuri. Mushu Bhaiyya, as we called him, was a professor in a college in Rae Bareli, who spent much of his modest earning on publishing his own books, on subjects that ranged from history to poetry to literature. He could always be relied on to give original ideas and he went to his grave claiming that all the journalists and writers from the family had stolen his ideas. Perhaps we did but there was one incantation of Mushu Bhaiyya's that I always found a little disturbing. He would make no secret of his pride over his elder daughter's very fair skin. She looks like a pure Saiyyadani, he would declare proudly. Quite regressive I would think for a man of ideas and vast learning (who was not fair skinned himself). 

But then he was just reflecting attitudes to colour passed through generations across communities. How many times have I heard some new bride in the family being described as "kali kaluti" (impossible to translate that) by a generation of grand aunts and grand-mothers who meant no racist offence? After all we live in a society where the word "Gori" is used in innumerable film songs and dialogues to describe a desirable woman.  Since some of the most gorgeous Indian women do not belong to this category, I can only surmise that fairness is also a reflection on social power, hence something to aspire to. 

Obviously the West too worshipped the white skin and as evidence I present the fairy tale of Snow White published in 1812 by the Brothers Grimm. The wicked stepmother has a magic mirror that she keeps asking about who is the fairest in the Land (that presumably was in what is today's Germany). 

But there is now in the West also a celebration of beauty that is not White. Before writing this piece I did a quick survey with my teenage daughter and asked her who were considered the beauties in popular culture and she came up with Beyonce for the current generation and Jennifer Lopez for an older lot. One is a black woman, the other is Hispanic. Personally I think Angelina Jolie is gorgeous, a sultry white woman with character on her face. 

Back home in India I am not a great fan of Deepika Padukone but I am relieved that we are currently enamoured of a woman who is not fair skinned as Aishwarya, Kareena, Katrina et all were. Priyanka Chopra and Kajol too are not particularly fair but both have light eyes, that's almost as good as being a Gori! The point being that we are just obsessed with ideas of beauty that suggest a trace of foreign blood.

Incidentally I also believe that all notions of racial purity and superiority promoted by families are all bunkum. There are dark skinned Brahmins and fair skinned people from Coorg who may not be Brahmins. To all the Saiyyeds and Pathans who may read this let me say there are many Qureshi butchers from whom I have bought meat who are also fair and light eyed. Apparently no dancing girls or singing ladies have altered the bloodline.