Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

A strong majority of Indians view themselves as fair and just 2% perceive themselves as dark, according to a Little India analysis of nearly 1.67 million profiles on India’s largest matrimonial site.

An examination of Bharat Matrimony determined that 57% of the profiles were self-classified as fair or very fair and another 33% as wheatish or wheatish brown.

The figures may seem incongruent in a community that hardly fits into the fair skinned spectrum on the global scale, but it underscores the widespread affinity for fair skin tone in a nation that has witnessed exploding demand for skin lightening creams in recent years. It is reflected in even the complexion choices that websites like Bharat Matrimony offer users, four of which — very fair, fair, wheatish, wheatish brown — are skewed to the white end of the spectrum and just one — dark — to the black tone. Shaadi.com, another prominent matrimonial Indian website, likewise, offers users four complexion choices, three on the light end — very fair, fair, wheatish — and just one dark.

Anika Sharma, business head for Bharat Matrimony for North America and Europe, insisted that the data does not imply that people misrepresent or lie about their complexion. “It is the way they perceive themselves, may be you can say that it is in an aspirational way.” Fair skin, she said, is widely preferred among Indians, which gets reflected in matrimonial ads.

Indians living in the United States, Indian American women especially, were more likely to classify themselves as very fair, an influence no doubt of the predominantly White culture in which they find themselves. 15% of Indian American women and 11% of Indian American men classified themselves as very fair compared to 11% of women and 8% of men in India.

Sunaina Maira, associate professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis, said: “This is probably due to the convergence of American racism which also favors white skin and denigrates blackness, with Indian notions of color prejudice. I think Indians want to pass as white as much as possible in the US and there is a long history of this in court cases by Indians in the US as well, when citizenship was denied to non-whites.”

Madhulika Khandelwal, director of the Asian American Center at Queens College, said she was “not surprised” that Indian Americans self identify themselves as fairer than people in India, as they are immersed in a culture “where Whites are not just in a majority, but they are also higher in the racial hierarchy.” As a result, Indians don’t seek to associate with Blacks or other minority groups, she says, seeking out “affinity instead with the dominant group.” She says, “I have often heard comments that someone does not look Indian, like more European or South European.”

Khandelwal acknowledges that fair skin is a major factor in the Indian matrimonial market and is particular to it, but even there it is mediated by other factors. The motive of self-identifying oneself as fair serves to expand the pool, she says, because it is an important factor in making the first cut. Bharat Matrimony’s Sharma agrees, “There is no question about it that if someone described themselves as dark, you will not even approach them or take it the parents, absolutely.”

But Khandelwal insists that skin tone is diffused by caste, religion, gender and other considerations later in the process of mate selection. She cites a “humorous example” from an experience accompanying a friend meeting a family for a prospective groom for her sister. The inevitable question about her sister’s complexion was brought up. Later in the conversation, when the same question was asked about the boy, the family became more defensive, discounting the skin tone’s relevance, explaining, “He varies, he is dark in the summer, but light in the winter.”

The Indian obsession with skin tone, it seems, is tuned even to the seasons.