NCCSAS Blog

The Race Question

“So…are there race issues in India?”

A professor of mine was asked this question in a class on contemporary South Asia that I took two semesters ago. I don’t really remember her answer, because I immediately thought “Oh Lord – there aren’t nearly enough instructional hours in the semester to adequately address this topic.” But here I am, trying to do it in a blog entry. Hey, I never said I wasn’t a hypocrite!

So why would I choose to write my first entry about this particular issue? Simply put, race is the 500 pound gorilla in the room when discussing South Asia. Or at least it’s one of them. You know, those things that everyone implicitly deals with but never openly talks about? Caste, Hindu-Muslim riots, poverty – these are the favorite Western discourse topics for India and elsewhere in South Asia. But it has always seemed to me that we have (falsely) assumed that race and racism come up solely in our own civilization, as “Our problems are not your problems!” has become everyone’s favorite cultural relativist answer these days.

Part of the problem, I think, is that there admittedly is no perfect word for “race” in Hindi, or any other Indic language (although please leave a comment and correct me if I’m wrong on this point). You can talk about your jaati, but that refers more to your historical caste group than anything else. I suppose the closest we can come is varn ka rang, which literally means the color of your skin. But, again, there exists considerable color differentiation among people we in America would consider of the same race. I’m sure there’s also some word out there that denotes “ancestry,” but even that doesn’t completely capture what we mean when we use the term “race.” Heck, even we aren’t too sure ourselves, sometimes. So, if I’ve ever heard of anything in the way of racism being discussed in Hindi, people have invariably used the English word. Perhaps this is why people are so reluctant to tackle how race manifests itself in India – from the start, you are already forced to rely on foreign (i.e. Western) terminology.

I have no doubt that that race, as we understand it, does not necessarily appear in exactly the same form as it does in the West. But the fact remains that it (and its sister concept, ethnicity) do matter in India. Let’s start a few thousand years ago with the commonly cited theory of the Aryans invading the subcontinent and pushing the Dravidians southward. Not only does this establish the linguistic divide between North and South, but many argue that the value placed on fair skin began around this time. It’s unknown exactly what the Aryans looked like (same with the Dravidians, if we go along with the theory), but most assume they were probably lighter skinned than the Dravidians and hailed from…the Caucasus? Europe? Who knows, really? This is all based on North Indian languages being distantly related to those spoken in Europe today. Dravidian languages in the South, however, bear no relation to North Indian languages other than the expected lexical borrowings. Important to note is that, in many popular (although by no means universally accepted) renderings of Indian history, the Aryans are portrayed as the ones who populated the ranks of the upper caste Brahmins – that is, the caste that has historically enjoyed the most social capital.

Switching gears a bit, to the British-endorsed, victorious, fair-skinned, holier-than-thou Aryan stereotype we can safely add the basic fact that, the longer you stay out working in the fields, the darker your skin will become. Given the temperatures in many parts of the subcontinent, you can think of the outdoors as tanning bed on crack. There’s a reason that many Indians today will say, “Don’t go outside! There’s too much dhoop (sunlight)!” But, back to my point, a very large part of South Asia remains agricultural, and farming remains a steadfast way of life. So, what exactly does having darker skin mean in this context? It means you stay out in the fields longer. It means you do more manual labor. It means you can’t hire your own help to do the work. It means, oftentimes, that you’re less well off than the fair-skinned family up the road that owns its land, has other people tend to it, and consequently spends a greater amount of time indoors. There’s nothing all that scientific here, just the reality that the color of your skin (as well as a slew of other variables) can, to a certain extent, be a function of your socioeconomic status in rural South Asia. Given that, for over two centuries, the people at the top of the social ladder were the uber-white Brits probably didn’t help matters that much.

Here we seem to have at least some of the historical and economic reasons behind the preference for fairer skin in India. Bridal advertisements often specifically request a girl who is gori (fair-skinned), and the skin lightening industry in South Asia is worth an amount that probably could have financed the US bailout. Let’s not even get started on how the lion’s share of Bollywood film stars currently employed would chromatically fit better in MY family photo album than in most Indians’ – this is particularly so with the actresses, perhaps reflecting the intersection of sexism and color preference. Regardless, the basic message here is rather obvious: Fairer is more beautiful, more attractive, and more successful.

It is through this paradigm that I’ve been told in India that, “America will never reach its full potential as long as it has the blacks and Hispanics.” Then there’s the lovely adjective chinky, which I’ve heard employed in no small frequency to refer to people with East Asian features. No, I’m not making this up. I mean, what do I say to these people – that the Jim Crow era just called and wants its drama back? While I’m sure these ideas were spread in no small part by colonial zealots, I’ve met too many individuals in South Asia who cannot stop pointing to the British boogeyman and saying, “It’s all because of them! They started all this!” Not only is this borderline neocolonialist, but it doesn’t solve the basic problem – you’re perpetuating it!

Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of people I met in South Asia who despised racism in all its forms – in fact, I would say these people made up the majority of my acquaintances. The NGO where I worked in New Delhi employed people of African, Anglo, Indian (North and South), and East Asian descent. In many ways, it reminded me of being in America. The India of today is an indisputably multiethnic nation. Even if we dispute ethnic differences between North and South, hundreds of thousands of international refugees and migrants now call many of India’s urban centers home because of the nation’s relative stability and tolerance. This is something Indians should take great pride in, just as I take pride in my own country when it is viewed in this light. Yet the clear preference for fairer skin among many sectors of the Indian populace (notably among younger girls) is disturbing, and ultimately cheapens the ideals of equality and inclusiveness set out at India’s independence.

And there are encouraging signs, too. As racial discourse makes its way into the subcontinent, many are questioning the current state of affairs (please see the NDTV clip I’ve provided the link for below). Dark-skinned actors landing major roles are no longer considered a liability. The South, long known for its “darker” people, has experienced a technological boom that has in many ways surpassed the development seen in the North. Finally, the hip-hop movement originating in African-American culture has found a highly receptive audience in many members of India’s urban youth. So, are there racial issues in India? You bet. But, in the best sense of the phrase, nothing lasts forever. The subcontinent is many things, but static is not one of them.

NDTV clip discussing racism against Indians from the northeastern states (i.e. those who frequently have more East Asian physical features): http://www.ndtv.com/news/videos/video_player.php?id=1116912