Kerala’s Chief Secretary, Sarada Muraleedharan addresses skin color discrimination and advocates for changing societal perceptions of beauty. (File Photo)
Yamini Nair
New DelhiMar 27, 2025 11:33 ISTFirst published on: Mar 27, 2025 at 11:33 IST
Kerala’s Chief Secretary, Sarada Muraleedharan, has ignited an essential debate on skin colour by calling out a social media comment that discriminated against the dusky-skinned bureaucrat in contrast to her fair-skinned husband. She wrote on Facebook, “Heard an interesting comment yesterday on my stewardship as chief secretary – that it is as black as my husband’s was white.”
The triggering comment on her wouldn’t be surprising for a dusky person, who grew up in a state which favours the fair-skinned minority over its dark-skinned majority. It was inconsequential to the person who compared her skin colour with that of her husband that she occupies the top-most bureaucratic position in the state, being the first woman there and the first person to succeed her spouse to the post. Sarada’s immediate predecessor was her husband V Venu.
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Calling black as the “all-pervasive truth of the universe”, Muraleedharan wrote, “I need to own my blackness.”
India’s obsession (South India even more so) with fair skin is too conspicuous to be overlooked – from directors and producers, who look for fair faces from the North as heroines in regional films, where there is no dearth of talent or beauty, to matrimonial advertisements that swarm classified columns where families unabashedly display their illiberal mindset by seeking “fair brides”. The appalling sexism and deep-rooted misogyny can be spotted everywhere.
For a patriarchal society that still judges a woman by her skin colour, culinary skills and how well she attends to everyone’s needs in the family, it hardly matters whether she flies an aeroplane or administers a state.
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Muraleedharan’s social media post sparked debates on television channels. However, the same channels also came under criticism for having only fair-skinned anchors and news readers. The parochial attitudes stem from families, where a little child is told that she is not pretty because she is dark, as much as from schools where fair faces are mostly chosen for stage performances. As Sarada pointed out, “Isn’t it more of a perception than a reality?” And isn’t it time to change that perception? Skin colour cannot and should not define a person. Period.
When I was in my early 30s, an elderly relative, who always saw me only as a dark-skinned girl, told me, “But now you look good and are earning as well. Then why are you not married?” She believed I wasn’t married as I didn’t look good enough till then.
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While women mostly bear the brunt of judgmental eyes all around, men are not spared either. At the Kariavattom campus of the University of Kerala, where I did my Master’s, in the early 2000s, there was an informal group of male students and research scholars who called themselves IAS – Invisible After Sunset. While one can attribute the coining to Malayalis’ innate sense of humour in mocking themselves, the stories behind it reeked of innocuous discrimination on the basis of their skin colour.
A cousin, who had an envious growth in her career and rose to be the senior VP of a multi-national financial institution, was upset that she was taunted by a relative over her poor skill in making good “aviyal (a vegetarian dish part of Kerala meals)”. Her teen daughter had to step in to lift her confidence, saying, “Don’t bother Amma, she is not earning even half as much as you do.”
Speaking to a television channel, Muraleedharan pinned hope on this young generation when she said, “The generation that we call Z and Alpha are more woke. They are getting a lot of inputs that inspire them to think open-mindedly. If we need to interpret that ‘black is beautiful’, we have to question all the symbols that lead to the notion that ‘black is not beautiful’. Only then can such discrimination be eliminated from the society’s consciousness.”
yamini.nair@expressindia.com
