Skin Colour Politics: Whiteness and Beauty in India [Paperback]

The global practice of skin bleaching is predominantly understood as an internalized legacy of colonialism and an embodiment of Western ideals of beauty. This book offers a new perspective on fair skin preference in India: it challenges the assumption that desires for light skin are always a desire of whiteness. Rather than talking back to the colonial centre, skin colour politics reorganise and reinforce social distinctions in Indian societies, which are neither exclusively local nor global. Based on primary research conducted in Delhi, this multi-dimensional study shows how skin colour intersects with and reproduces other categories of social distinction  primarily gender, class, caste, race, region and religion. It historically embeds fairness as an Indian, precolonial yet transnational ideal of beauty. The bleached body emerges as an active and thus, potentially resistant part of negotiating social status within multiple power relations and complex beauty regimes. By mapping a whole geography of skin colours in India, this book shows how fair skin as a locally embedded beauty norm and whiteness as a global cultural imperative interrelate.1 In this Country, Beauty is defined by Fairness of Skin.- 2 Colourism in India within and beyond Colonialism Historically tracing Fair Skin as a locally embedded, yet transnational, colonially re-shaped and subversively contested signifier of social status and norm of beauty.- 3 Beauty as Project, Fairness as Product: Skin Colour Management and Fairness Consumption in Post-colonial India.- 4 Shades of Fair, Shapes of Beauty, and Shifts of Status Narrating and Practising Skin Bleaching in Contemporary Delhi.- 5 Conclusion and OutlookNina Kullrich graduated in cultural and literary studies and currently works as project coordinator for an NGO with a focus on global justice and intersectional feminisms.The global practice of skin bleaching is predominantly understood as an internalized legacy of colonialilCX