October 17, 2019

Trust Nandita Das to be honest, quirky and hard-hitting. People are talking about her latest video with an ensemble cast including Ratna Pathak Shah, Suchitra Pillai, Divya Dutta, Gul Panag, Swara Bhaskar, Radhika Apte, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Kanwaljit and Nandita herself, with others.

The video shows how despite having people of all shades, Indians still prefer fair-skinned girls. As Nandita says at the beginning, hum nahin sudhrenge. The rest of the video shows how people want fair-skinned wives and children and how people of a darker shade of skin are discriminated against in talent shows. It also shows how lights, makeup and 'photoshopped' images are used to make 'dark' actors appear fair-skinned on the covers of glamour magazines.

People say that Nandita Das has always raised her voice against discrimination against the so-called dark-skinned girls. People say she supports the "Dark is Beautiful" campaign run by Women of Worth which uses slogans such as "Stay Unfair, Stay Beautiful" to tell youngsters that the colour of their skin does not matter. She has said that many times makeup men or women would tell her to lighten her skin tone and there is a lot of prejudice against dark-skinned girls.

People ask why should the colour of your skin matter at all? People say we are Indians and we should be proud of our skin colour. To lighten it artificially is to show ourselves as something different than what we actually are and that is cheating. If an Indian girl has a fair complexion it is well and good. But if some girls are dark, it does not mean they are not beautiful or less beautiful. Beauty, even physical beauty, is not dependent on the colour of one's skin.

People are very appreciative of Nandita's efforts to educate the youngsters that the colour of your skin doesn't make you more, or less, beautiful. The video is supported by JSW.