Colorism and Female Identity: Discourses from Twentieth-Century Indian Culture and Literature

To examine how light skin, especially among Indian women, has powerful social capital, this essay exhumes the politics of colorism and female identity that is palpably present in both cultural and literary discourses of the twentieth century. It aims to uphold three goals: one, by engaging with anthropological and historical readings, establish the prevalence of colorism in colonial and postcolonial India; two, by highlighting epidermal hierarchies within popular Indian culture, address how skin color has inevitably governed women's personal and professional lives; and three, by harnessing the subversive potential in select works of twentieth century Indian writers Santa Chatterjee, Munshi Premchand, K. Saraswathi Amma, Kamala Markandaya, and Arundhati Roy-who hail from various cultural and geographic backgrounds, demonstrate how the supremacy of light skin is a pan-Indian phenomenon that needs to be resisted. Finally, this essay argues that the hegemony of light skin, which continues to adversely affect Indian women's self-esteem, must be both confronted and quashed.