Advertisement
The trend of #BlackLivesMatter has taken the internet by storm following the death of US citizen George Floyd that has stirred the conditions across the globe. The incident is a hard-hitting fact that racism still exists in a so-called civilized society. Actress Malavika Mohanan yesterday took to Instagram account to recall a not so pleasant incident that she had came across when she was a teenager, and also about the existence of racism and colourism in Indian society.
Malavika Mohanan wrote, “When I was 14 yrs old, one of my closest friends at that point told me that his mother never let him drink tea because she had this weird belief that drinking tea darkened ones’ skin complexion, and when he asked for tea once she told him(referring to me) “If you drink tea, you will become dark like her”. He was a fair maharashtrian boy and I was a wheat-ish skinned malayalee girl. The complexion dissimilarity we had had never even occurred to me up until that point. This left me perplexed because it was the first time somebody had made a comment like that with a mean undertone about my skin colour.”
The actress also further stated that there’s still so much existence of casual racism and colourism in our own society which indeed is quite shocking. Malavika Mohanan’s note further read, “So much casual racism and colourism exists in our own society. Calling a dark skinned person ‘kala’ is something we see on an everyday basis. The discriminatory behaviour against south-Indians and North-East Indians is also appalling. Dark skinned Indians are jokingly referred to as ‘madrasis’ because for some strange reason these ignorant people think all South Indians are only dark skinned. North-East Indians are almost exclusively only called ‘chinki’, all black people are casually referred to as ‘negros’ and fair people are equated as beautiful and dark skinned people are equated as ugly.”
Advertisement
