gori , chitti kudi

Vikram Seth wrote his great epic novel A Suitable Boy in 1993, I’m waiting for his next; Suitable Girl which is coming out in 2013. It would be an interesting read to say the least. I was sourcing advertisements for my magazine Nirmal Marg.Like all enterprises the God of Mammon comes into play in all enterprises whether they are charitable or otherwise. Altruism is scarce, you see. Punjab has a mind-set where parents meaningfully want to marry their daughters at an early age and they advertise through matrimonial advertisements. My marketing manager was very enthusiastic and assured me of a great return and started projecting increasing profits. When I told him that we would not accept any advertisement which blatantly characterizes a woman as “fair ‘he was taken aback. This got me thinking and the result is…..
Fair,
Fair around 25,
Fair, good looking, well propertied….
Fair professional!
Pretty slim, fair tall professionally qualified girl.
Fair and simple preferably in US/ Canada
Fair and beautiful …. Oh that is really simple
Fair, clean habits… umm! What do you mean by this one? Does this mean she should have OCD (Obsessive cleanliness Disorder?)
Why this fixation with fair, gori chitti kudi?
This obsession actually exists both sides of the border. The Pakistan Punjab is worse than us, but let’s get into that another day. From fixations about caste and virginity in the 1930’s the focus shifted to education and parity between partners. In the 1930’s and 1940’s a typical matrimonial advertisement consisted of a desire to find a handsome, healthy , fair virgin girl, western fashioned, highly educated , need not approach. I mean are we talking of a human being or just reproductive stock? You know how they check cattle lines for better milk production.
When we gradually progressed to the 1960’s a family’s connections was a popular request along with grooms who had government jobs. The underlying requirement of a gori bahu remained. The colonial hangover remained. To have a demure, fair white daughter in law epitomized success in the society. The 1970’s and 80’s saw many ads. For fair, tall, homely and convent educated girls (i.e. the ones who could speak English).Education was taking root and there was a high demand from educated men who wanted life partners compatible to them.
We progressed to the 90’s where education mattered but social status was what the deciding factor was; but the white fixation remained. The adjectives became more sophisticated, the words inter-changed but the bottom line was the same. The requirement started with fair and ended with white. Where else but in Punjab, which raised the bar for wheat production in the country and brought laurels coined a phrase ‘wheatish complexion’. Are we supposed to look at the husk or the inner color of the grain? Why have we started equating a human being on the basis of the color which can be scientifically broken down on the basis of the gene she carries? Why have we become ruthless buyers of flesh based on color and have forgotten the inner beauty of the soul which exists breathes, not tinged by color.
An US study says that Indians have a preference for light skin because skin color and caste are connected in the Indian imagination. Dating and career success, they say are further linked to skin color. These sources further admit that colors in India is related to British colonialism and the importance of a color-based hierarchy : but that was then and today India still embraces prejudice against dark-skinned people, and thereby creating a market for these unsavory products. Dr Anu GoelM.D., a leading cosmetologist of Jalandhar says that 90% of the cases which she sees everyday lead to in a roundabout fashion that, ‘help us, we want to lighten our skin tone.” The Punjabi mother wants her mother to look white. She also states that it is ironical that men are dark but the desire to marry white is a pre-requisite of a successful marriage. The exploitation and the manipulation products which are in the market are so high that we contribute the second highest revenue to the cosmetic industry. Dr. Anu also says that 90% of the whitening products available in the market for consumer are crap and cause damage sometimes leading to severity in the form of skin cancer.
The obsession for being white cannot be solely blamed on insecure individuals or a now internalized colorism.A white skin obsession is instigated by the MNC’s – for profit. It is not simply a legacy of the British Raj. The Face book Application which Vaseline has introduced is one such kind which plays upon the Indian Men’s insecurities (the next frontier).Even the advertisements show that a dark-skinned woman wearing a saree will be rejected but a fair skinned woman in western clothes will get selected. Irony being, that woman are still viewed as sex objects, adornments and the grey matter they have is so-incidental!

Do not pity the Indian seeker of lighter skin, or condemn him or her for racism or shake heads over the legacy of colonialism we should consider how outgoing Western cultural dominance and capitalist economic penetration ( via MNC’s) who play on global insecurities in contributing to the global market in skin–lightening products.
A fair girl it seems is the end to Punjabi men’s problems and also the utopian cure to all that plagues Punjab right now. Be it a visa to the phoren lands or a gori kudi !