Hello, I am Shruti Pandita.
The above words are how I introduce myself to others. A pretty simple statement. Just like most people, you must say something similar when encountering someone too, right? I mean everyone does. Usually, people get the same introduction back followed by a greeting like it’s nice to meet you, yes?
‘ Isn’t that obvious?’ Your mind must be already questioning the motive behind my words. Well, not wanting to drag it any further — things are not quite same for me.
The replies that I receive are mostly not those obvious statements. The response I get in return is pretty different than yours.
Curious? Well, Instead of any greetings I usually get questions that sound like — Are you white? Is any of your parents white? Hey, how’s it possible that you are from India? You are too light-skinned for being called Indian.
Not to forget the ones on social media that are pretty close to my heart — You are a catfish, that’s not your real face, who’s profile picture did you steal? You are a liar, you are not brown.
The reason? People nowadays tend to mistake somebody’s skin colour for their race or ethnicity. There I said it.
My cultural background.
I am basically from (drum-rolls) India. Must be obvious from my name. In India, I’m from the northernmost city to be exact. People from my region and even the adjoining areas have relatively light skin as compared to the rest of my country but that doesn’t make us white or liars.
Does my light skin colour change my race? A big no. I have been born and brought up in India. No matter what my skin colour is I am a brown woman and that’s a fact.
The Havoc on social media.
A few years ago, I had put — “there’s no space for perverts here” in the bio of my Instagram account and there was this guy on instagram who texted me — ’if there is no space for perverts here then there should be no space for catfishers as well” Yes, I do clearly remember his remarks. In all honesty, I still have the screenshot of his text in my phone.
This text affected me to a great extent. I had already gotten used to people asking strange and disrespectful questions towards my culture and ethnicity, questions towards my nationality but this text was no question.
It was an accusation. A direct hit towards my existence.
At a point of time, I got so irritated with these recurring texts that I wrote a long paragraph describing my frustration, how I wanted them to stop asking me if any of my parents are white.
I am sure anyone reading the short paragraph would have easily understood my annoyance towards these questions and how disrespectful they felt. Keeping this in mind, I published that chunk of words on almost every social media platform I was using at the time.
The outcome? Nothing changed. These questions still kept flooding my DMS.
I’m not sure if people didn’t see my post or if they were simply least bothered about something which was titled as ‘important’ and pinned on top of my accounts but the situation remained same.
In around the summers of 2019, I was casually checking the message requests of my Instagram account when I found a text saying — ’I have already reported your account for catfishing’ Those pictures don’t belong to you. These were the exact words which I found in my DM.
At that time I got a little scared. The first thought that came to my mind was, will my Instagram account really get banned, because a random guy who’s not even from my country doesn’t think that I fit into his stereotype of what he perceives as a brown woman.
He would rather think that I’m stealing the pictures of a white woman and promoting them as my own.
The crazy thing is, he didn’t have any doubts, he was not asking any question. He was accusing and he was sure that my face was not my own.
These accusations and questions had such a bad effect on my mental health that I was forced to deactivate my Instagram account. For more than a year I chose not to have an Instagram account at all.
Yes, It may not be the brightest decision I took in my life, but it was indeed a good one. My mind was at peace after a very long time. I felt happy. Even though it was not very brave of me to just run away, I chose my happiness and mental health over a social media presence.
After a year, I was ready for social media again but not for those meaning less statements, questions or accusations therefore this time I kept my account private.
Only my friends and family were accepted into my small world and even though It has been a long time since then, I am still stuck on the rule to allow only my friends and family on my Instagram.
As a content writer, I am well aware of the importance of social media to market my skills I am but no matter how hard I try, I’m still not ready for it. I’m not able to channel enough power in myself to change the privacy of my account from private to public. I’m still scared to open up to the world.
Stereotype in India.
To my utmost despair, this stereotype is rooted deep in the minds of my countrymen just like the people from the rest of the world. When I first graduated from my High school and joined a university I got to see the same reactions from my fellow mates as I had earlier found on Instagram.
The occasional — oh angrez (white) of highschool was multiplied by 100 in college. Things like — you have worn foundation lighter than your colour, right? How are you so light-skinned? How much makeup are you wearing to look so fair? Fair. Fair. Fair. It was everywhere, all the time. I have even had some people touching my face to make sure there isn’t any kind of foundation on it.
Now you must be thinking why is she all of a sudden ranting about her problems here? The answer to that is an Instagram reel. Yes, you heard me right.
I’m not alone.
I was scrolling through Instagram reels last week, when I found this TikTok video in which the person was annoyed and talking about how if anyone called him white or a liar again just based on the fact that his skin colour is light and people think he’s lying about his race then he’s gonna shove chicken tikka up their as*.
He ended this video with a statement — skin colour and the race is not the same thing. A TikTok video and a statement which inspired me to speak about my experiences with the same issue here.
I checked his comments and people still didn’t agree with him, he was still begin called a liar. I felt like his situation was quite similar to me but was he running away from those trolls? No.
Did he deactivate his account? A big no. Instead, he was speaking about the issue on a platform which was better suited for him as a video content creator.
His outlook towards this issue inspired me as a writer to write about it on a platform which is better suited for me, his video gave a voice to me, and now I want to speak (technically, write) to the world about it.
Who knows maybe my experience will give voice to hundreds if not thousands who are going through a similar experience. I checked his other reels and there were a few of them where he spoke about the same issue, for example how people were attacking him for cultural appropriation for embracing his own culture.
The other day, I came across an almost same case on YouTube. Where people were attacking a Youtuber in the name of cultural appropriation for wearing a lehenga choli (an Indian traditional outfit) on her white wedding.
She was also forced to explain herself by creating another video explaining her reasons of doing so, turns out she is half Indian and wanted to make her mother happy.
These recent things made me question — Why is it so bad for us to embrace our own culture and heritage just because the amount of melanin in our skin is a little less than the majority of people from our race?
Awareness is The New Education.
People need to understand, that not every light skinned person is white. People need to know the roots of a person before throwing the accusations of cultural appropriation at them. A little emphathy goes a long way.
We, humans, have created so strict stereotypes in our heads that when we see something even a little different than those serotypes, we tend to put that person down and call him or her a liar.
Yes, people would rather put you down for being who you are rather than accepting that their thinking or the small box based on which they have divided the human species is absurd.
Yes, I understand the majority of Indians are brown but that shouldn’t be a reason for the few of us to be trolled and called angreez (white) because, at the end of the day, I’m as much as an Indian as my fellow countrymen and women with a little more Melanin in their skin are, I have as much as the right to embrace my culture and race as they have.
I always knew I’m not the only one going through this spree but these two people gave me the required push I needed to deal with these accusations.
Just like myself, there is a percentage of the population in India who have light skin but that doesn’t mean we are any less of Indians.
It all comes down to the stereotype that Indians are all brown. The majority of them? Maybe. But not all.
When I used to explain this to others, in the beginning, they used to reply with yes we know Indians have light skin too but not that light. Your skin colour is that of a standard caucasian.
Well, if you are someone (Indian or not) who also believes in this reasoning then let me clarify this for you.
India is a land of diversity. Location and people included. We people come in a variety of different forms.
From people with brown skin to people with black skin, from people with light skin colour to people with weatish skin colour. Not to forget people with standard northeast Asian features who are often discriminated on the basis of their features too.
No matter what we look like, we all are from Bharat and therefore deserve to be called Indians.
I may have a lighter skin colour than majority of my fellow women but I am an Indian woman. Not white, not a catfish, not a liar.
I am very proud of my race but I’m equally proud of my skin as well.
…
Thank you for reading about my experience and sticking till the very end.
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Please check out Shruti Pandita’s website: theviolentheart.com.
This post was previously published on medium.com.
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