Bollywood’s Serious Issues With Colourism
We often talk about Hollywood and racism, but there’s another elephant in the room we never address, Bollywood and their issues with colourism.
It is without a doubt India has the biggest and most popular motion picture factory, after Hollywood. From its inception, Bollywood had a fair share of growth during the silent era like every nation’s history of filmmaking journey. However, it was only until Himansu Ra, in 1934, spearheaded the growth of Indian cinema as a whole.
Dadasaheb Phalke, the father of Indian cinema and Bollywood, is responsible for developing this Hindi-language sector of the Indian moviemaking industry, into an enormous film empire that we now have today. With that, comes a lot of things that the entire industry and its audiences have swept under the rug, and that is ‘misrepresentation’.
The misrepresentation of Indians in Bollywood movies is highlighting their issues with colourism. Like why would you constantly choose to only make movies that star light-skinned Indians?
This issue, is bigger than what I’m penning here, but let me touch on it a bit:
These Are The Foundations of Racism
The post-colonial hangover of Indians should be blamed for Bollywood’s idea of beauty — which comes from the European standard. The fact that tall, slim, light-to-fair complexion, etc seems to be the only standardised casting brief, is a huge problem. Be that as it may, this issue that Bollywood has with colourism, I personally wouldn’t quite phrase them with racism, but the two are somehow interlinked.
It does, however, continue to perpetuate the unjust behaviour that is derived from preconceived and unfounded opinions that already exist already about dark-skinned Indians. Already skin colour continues to serve as the most obvious criterion in determining how a person will be evaluated and judged.
This form of prejudice continues to thrive because of the principles of racism and by continuing to shut out dark-skinned Indian actors, we are not ending this chain.
The Prejudice Surrounding These Stereotypes
North Indian actors are cast to represent South Indians, and they would cast Nort-East Indians in as these strong muscular characters that can do heroic stuff in exhilarating ways. As someone who grew up in a predominantly black indigenous community, and watched Bollywood movies quite a lot, say, on-par with the Hollywood ones, I don’t remember ever seeing dark-skinned Indians.
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My sister, who happens to still be obsessed with Bollywood motion pictures from Television to Filmic experiences, assumed that only light-skinned Indians exist. Personally, it took going to film school and finding myself widening my scope on motion pictures, did I conclude that the Bollywood industry is just not interested in casting dark-skinned Indians.
This ingrained a default thinking where we already know that dark skin is demonised and light skin wins the prize at the end of the day.
The Casting Choices Are ‘Sus’
The casting that has been used in Indian Telenovelas and a lot of Bollywood movies, has always been suspicious, to say the least. This is in a sense that, some of the stereotypes that they continue perpetuating when writing characters, continues to feed into the prejudice instead of putting an end to the cycle. Malayalam cannot be the only representation that we ever saw in Bollywood.
Bollywood’s criteria worked because it was growing the industry. However, the industry is now big worldwide with endless syndications, and inclusion will never ruin it.
Bollywood has moved towards hiring more actresses of mixed white and Indian, or Arab and Indian. The majority of these actors do not even speak Hindi when they begin their journey in the industry. Some speak a little of it, but they are not very good at it and their understanding of the values and culture, are quite broad in retrospect.
A character that is portrayed by a dark-skinned cast, would mostly be poor. Roles for the rich, affluent and exquisite, are only reserved for light-toned actors. This is the same reason why most Indians don’t end up watching Bollywood content, and no one has any idea of when the industry is going to step out of that colonial crap. It is from a system that was built and entrenched to exclude.
The Esteemed Audience Is Mixed
A large majority of audiences in India — that are mostly first-in-line of the content that filmmakers and producers make — have different skin tones. There’s dark-brown, there’s light-brown, there’s mid-brown, there’s pale…pretty much mixed. Now they watch all Telenovelas and only see one skin variation of them, that is mostly light-skinned.
This builds some internal issues on the inside. It sure as hell messes up one’s confidence, self-esteem and causes major body dysphoria concerns that one might already have.
As a film and television graduate, I find this extremely concerning that there is someone out of there, grew up watching that motion picture and only saw people that were just lighter than them being given good writing material.
The state of Tamil Nadu, in India, has predominantly more darker-skinned people. Yet, I am pretty sure that they only have lighter-skinned actors carry the fame and all the privileges that come with being light, for them.
How Can This Be Rectified?
Representation, inclusivity, and accommodating people, are not as hard as people make it to be. It is only hard and complicated for those who want to continue excluding the lesser represented skin colour. Making space for dark-skinned actors is something that Bollywood should make a priority. This was deeply entrenched by post-colonialism and the systematic traces of it, shouldn’t be allowed to thrive.
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The same way the movie and television industry at large is being called out on always picking lighter-skinned Indian, Asian, Hispanic, and indigenous black characters, on purpose, Bollywood should relook their casting choices. They have been doing this for a long time and never saw any problems with it. Well, that time has passed.
Skin colour matters because we are a visual species and we respond to one another based on the way we physically present. It is outrageous that people do not get to see the diversity within each culture.
This call for inclusion does not mean that light-skinned Indian talent should be excluded, it just means there should be space for everyone. Find a way to balance all, for any 5 light-skin talent that you cast, remember to match that number and even exceed it. I hope the motion picture industry does better with this.
