Actress and filmmaker, Nandita Das is known for making an effort to change the color bias system in the country with her campaign Dark Is Beautiful in 2013. The campaign Das supports, brings to light the colour discrimination men and women face in the society and insists on celebrating the beauty in all skin colour. The filmmaker has recently shot an anthem which has been made to set a change in the society to the color based bias in Indian society. The song features popular Bollywood celebrities and is a campaign to fight distinguishing words like fair and dark etc
Nandita Das recently shot a two-minute film titled, ‘India’s Got Colour.’ The song features Ali Fazal, Radhika Apte, Konkona Sen Sharma, Gul Panag, Divya Dutta, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Tillotama Shome, Sayani Gupta and Suchitra Pillai amongst a few. According to a report in Mumbai Mirror, the actress is collaborating with director Mahesh Mathai and shares stories from the past about how her ‘Dark Is Beautiful’ campaign inspired young women to fight discrimination in society. Nandita said that her idea is to bring about a change with the narrative by making the celebration of skin colour in India as a whole. She further mentioned that there are 1.3 billion people in the country and all have different shares of skin tones.
Sharing more information about the anthem, Nandita said that the song is a fun one and calls out the colour discrimination we see around us. She added that the anthem is currently in post-production and she is overjoyed with the absolute support she has received from everyone with her campaign. Das also mentioned that all the key members in the crew have worked on the anthem with great effort.
Nandita also spoke in brief about how dark-skinned toned people often face the bias of society in a harsh or subtle way. From her experience in Bollywood, she added that if you are dark, you are only considered for roles of a slum dweller or village women, etc, while the character if an urban woman is pictured to be fair-faced. She added how her make-up man always gave her suggestions about brightening her skin tone with make-up to look fairer and mentioned that she has directors and camera persons advising her that if she made her skin tone lighter, she would play the character of an educated upper-class woman.
Concluding on the same, Nandita added that she is happy that many people around her feel the same about the issue regarding the bias in the society and also added that were happy to work for free.
Image source: Instagram/ Nandita Das