An enduring of the unfair

In many children’s books, the fair is good and dark is bad trope has long been perpetuated. But this is changing now.

I recently read an article about an Indian researcher who created a comic book to introduce local children to an animal that lived in their region. On the one hand, I’m delighted. We need more books like this to make children aware of the rich diversity of their surroundings and environment.

On the other hand, the cover of the book saddened me. Because, on the cover of this book is an illustration of the protagonist who’s a girl with pinkish-white skin.

Now, why should a book aimed at little brown kids, not have a little brown girl on the cover? Why am I picking on this seemingly insignificant issue? Because the fairness cream industry in India is worth Rs 4,000 crore and is anything but insignificant.

Because industries are raking in millions off the insecurities of a billion Indians about something as natural as the colour of their skin.

Beauty in all shades

Beauty and skin colour are not related. And yet, generations of Indians have scrubbed, powdered and creamed their skins in the hope of becoming a few shades fairer.

While society is largely to blame, children’s books have only made things worse. In comic books like Amar Chitra Katha and Tinkle, the skin colours of the characters have for long perpetuated the fair equals good/beautiful, dark is bad/ugly trope. Fairy tale and folk tale books have only white- skinned heroes, as if brown-skinned characters cannot be the stars of any story.

And characters with truly dark skin, like Krishna, Rama, Shiva, and Draupadi, who were famed for their good looks, got coloured light blue! What a missed opportunity to show that dark skin and beauty go hand in hand!

But now, things are changing slowly in the children’s publishing industry. You only have to look up picture books by Tulika, Karadi, Pratham/StoryWeaver, or even the covers of chapter books, like Duckbill’s hOle books, to see gloriously brown skin in all shades. No white skin in sight!

And yet, it isn’t enough. I recently conducted an online session with a school around my book Susie Will Not Speak. The illustrator, Lavanya Naidu, has illustrated the book beautifully, and has made the two main characters Susie and Jahan brown-skinned, like any Indian children. During the session, one child asked me why Susie’s skin is a darker shade of brown than Jahan’s. I told the child that they’re just representative of two regular Indians with different skin colours, and that their skin colour has nothing to do with the story.

But the child wasn’t convinced, and insisted that there had to be an explanation for why Susie is darker-skinned than Jahan. If this had been an in-person session, I would’ve liked to take the child aside later, and understand exactly what the child was thinking.

But whatever be the case, it made me sad that something like skin colour even needed to be a topic of discussion.

And, like the cover of the comic book, this incident reminded me that we still have a long, long way to go.

The author has written 10 books for children and can be reached at www.shruthi-rao.com

GobbledyBook is a fortnightly column that gives a peek into the wondrous world of children’s books. Hop on! Or as Alice did, plunge into the rabbit hole.