Why is skin colour more important than intelligence, kindness or talent?, asks Malavika Mohanan

The Beyond The Clouds actor Malavika Mohanan posted a thought-provoking note on Instagram which was triggered by the US protests. She talks about casual racism in India and how we need to introspect

While we speak about global racism, we must also become aware about what’s happening around us, in our homes... and do our part in thwarting the obvious as well as the subtle racism and colourism that exists all around us..,” said actor Malavika Mohanan, in her Instagram post on June 3. The Beyond The Clouds (2017) actor’s thought-provoking note was triggered by the protests in the US and sparking the #BlackLivesMatter movement again.

Malavika says we need to have a conversation about these notions that only if you are fair, will you be beautiful or successful

Talking about the thought behind the post, she says, “Change should start in your own home and those protests got me thinking that we need that change in India, too. In India, we have colourism as people with dark complexion are called ugly, women with dark-skin find it tough to get married and these are considered normal issues in any strata of our society. Barring a few metropolitan cities where dark complexion isn’t ‘that’ looked down upon, it is in the rest of our country.”

In her post, the actor also mentioned how “complexion dissimilarity” never occurred to her as a teenager and when it did, they left her “perplexed” because someone made a comment with a “mean undertone” about her skin colour. She also talked about how casual racism and colourism exists in our own society. People call “a dark skinned person ‘kala’” or “madrasis” and “North-East Indians are called ‘chinki’” “What makes you beautiful is being a good and kind person, and not the colour of your skin,” she added.

Mohanan feels there is need for introspection and says, “Why is skin colour more important than intelligence, kindness or talent? It never made sense to me. It never bothered me if people felt I wasn’t fair enough, because my upbringing gave me confidence. But most people are ridiculed for dark skin. It is ridiculous that there are products that focus on how to be fair. We need to have a conversation about these notions that only if you are fair, will you be beautiful or successful. It is a dated notion. Skin colour is an inconsequential thing to define someone,” she concludes.