From Hrithik Roshan In Super 30 To Bhumi Pednekar In Bala, Brown-Face Is A Disturbing And Racist Practice In Bollywood That Needs To Stop

Bollywood has always been accused of being a derivative of Hollywood. Well, to be perfectly honest, Bollywood has on multiple occasions been ‘inspired’ by the films and the trends of Hollywood, sometimes with credit and sometimes without it. Most of us ardent fans have made somewhat peace with it but you know things have got a little too out of hand when Bollywood starts getting inspired by the disturbing practices that are frowned upon even there.

We are talking about brownface or blackface. For the uninitiated, black-face or brown-face refers to the practice of actors putting on dark makeup to portray colored characters. In Hollywood, it has a seemingly racist history and is now considered to be a very offensive thing to do. In India, the concept of racism has been very different from that in the west, but this recent trend of major actor and actress painting their face in unrealistic dark colors to portray ‘dark-skinned’ characters is equally problematic and offensive.

While this has been a major discussion in the west, in India the concept is not very popular. There have been many instances in the past, but most recently questions were raised about Hrithik Roshan’s portrayal of Anand Kumar in Super 30. As everyone would know, Hrithik is a fair-skinned man who looks nothing like the real Anand Kumar, so the only thing that makers could come up with to make him look like the math genius from Bihar was to give him this unrealistic yellowish-brown skin tone.

In another recent instance, Bhumi Pednekar’s character in Ayushmann Khurrana’s Bala is also propagating the same practice. Bhumi plays the role of Latika, a feisty and unapologetic lawyer who does not let people’s opinions on her dark-skin be a limitation to her anyway. What a noble attempt to talk about the fair skin bias in the society, except for the inherent irony! In the whole film, Bhumi’s powerful portrayal is often jarred by the inconsistent blackening of her face. While her face is smeared with this odd black color, her real color is often visible when she raises her hand. Instead of going through this continuity nightmare, why not cast an actress who is naturally dusky with a realistic complexion? Heaven knows we have actresses in the industry who were more than capable of pulling off the role.

The practice does not stop here, the recently released poster of Coolie No.1 has Varun Dhawan sporting a deep and dusky skin tone. This is one of the most problematic instances where the makers are subtly implying that people from a certain professional background and therefore a certain economic strata have a certain type of skintone.

In fact, Bollywood showing dark skin for people belonging to the poor economic or social background is not new. In reality, it is not like we are never seen a rich or higher caste man with a dark tone or a lower class and poor woman with a fair skin tone, but due to the deep-set bias against dark skin the popular culture always tends to establish that poor and lower caste people are dark, thus undesirable and rich and higher caste people are fair and thus desirable.

For the longest time, the dominant North Indian culture in Bollywood also meant that the same treatment was meted out to South Indian characters in films who were of course painted in a darker skin tone and caricaturish accent. Apart from being anthropologically inaccurate, it also shows the serious level of bias we were operating at.

Bollywood, for the most part of its history, has not been the most sensitive to political correctness. However, the age of directors have brought forth with them a level of consciousness and sensitivity who are not acknowledging the shameful biases but also taking active measures to do away with them. We are talking about sexism in films and cultural stereotypes and trying to make things better as we go forward. In such a scenario, the relative silence over something is as offensive and blatantly racist is surely puzzling.