As a nation, we are obsessed with fair skin, no matter how much we try to hide under the garb about it. Matrimonial sites glaringly and quite shamelessly carry ads that ask for “a fair girl” and fairness cream do brisk business in the country, with their makers calling “dark” everything from a “disease” to an “embarrassment to the society.”
Indian skin tone in general is usually considered to be wheatish in colour and while the pigment Melanin (responsible for the colour of the skin) is not uniformly distributed in everyone (some have less and some have more), it is simply a biological attribute and has nothing to do with the person’s personality. And even though actors like Nandita Das have vehemently stood up against such bias, we still have a long way to go.
However, have you ever wondered what was the skin tone of our favourite Gods and Goddesses and whether it even matters? All of us have grown up listening to the song in which Krishna, visibly disappointed at the colour of his skin asks his mother Yashoda as to why he is dark skinned while Radha is fair (Radha kyun gori, main kyun kaala?)
However, no matter what skin coloured was he, does that make him any less powerful than the other Gods? We all know that Shiva too, did not fall into the category of fair men, (according to legend that is) but does that make him any less empowering? Isn’t it ironic that we pray to Gods with the same skin colour as humans, yet shove away the latter owing to their dark color, deeming them unfit to live in the society.
To fight against this prejudice, Chennai-based photograher Naresh Nil’s recently started a photo series called “Dark is divine” that featured images depicting gods and goddesses as dark-skinned.
The project was started in September 2017 and, over two months, almost seven portraits, including those of Bala Murugan, who is an avatar of Subramanya, Lakshmi, and Krishna as a child were created along with Durga and Yashoda, among many others.
The series has received positive feedback from all across and models who were part of the project were all too happy to participate in a cause they were extremely passionate about.
Let’s all of us too work together to eradicate such prejudices from our society once and for all.
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