Indian photographer gives divinity a dark skin
▶ Naresh Nil’s conceptual photos question caste and tradition, writes Samanth Subramanian
Naresh Nil made his expectations very clear when he put out a casting call: “Wanted: dark or dusky models for a conceptual photo shoot.” But when the models turned up and he explained his project to them, he was met with reluctance.
Nil, 28, a photographer in Chennai, mostly shoots for fashion or retail. But once a year, he and his business partner try to push the boundaries with a project that reaches out to India’s social conscience.
“Once it was a short film on Labour Day and on India’s labourers. Another time, it was an a capella version of the national anthem,” Nil says. “This year we were thinking about these concepts of dark and fair skin.”
Indian society favours fair skin. The markets are awash with skin-whitening creams, the hottest models and movie stars are invariably fair, and matrimonial advertisements make a point of listing pale skin as a desirable attribute.
But it doesn’t end there. “Whenever we see these pictures of Hindu gods and goddesses, on calendars or on stickers or on posters, they’re invariably fair-skinned,” Nil says. “So we figured, why not reverse this and compare dark skin to divinity?”
The resultant photo series, released online two weeks ago, features seven artfully composed images where dark models, men and women, are shot in the poses and settings traditionally associated with Hindu deities.
The goddess Sita, from the Ramayana, plays with her two dusky young sons in a bucolic meadow. A boy Krishna, his swarthy chest bare, clambers onto a footstool and gazes at a pot of churned butter suspended just above his head. A saturnine Shiva sits in meditation, upon a tiger-skin rug, a snake coiled around his neck.
When Nil explained these ideas to his prospective models in September, they backed out.
“This is after all a religious theme, so they had their reasons,” he says. “Some thought their families would be against this. Others thought the project would be controversial.”
Traditions are difficult to defy. The most popular depictions of Hindu deities were painted by the artist Raja Ravi Varma more than a century ago. These depictions are now everywhere, on calendars and framed posters.
Even children’s literature pushes these notions. The popular Amar Chitra Katha series of comic books, which retells stories from Hindu mythology, invariably gives its noble gods peach-pink skin and its villainous demons an ash-black colour.
The “epidermal politics” of these comics are shaped by several aspects of Indian history, says Radhika Parameswaran, a media studies professor at the University of Indiana.
One factor relates to the Hindu caste system, of how the hierarchies of caste have been overlaid on to skin colour, Ms Parameswaran tells The National.
“Lighter skin colour is viewed as a status symbol for the middle and upper castes, who did not have to do manual labour,” she says.
British colonisation also played a role.
“There is a general notion that whiteness does equate to capitalist, consumer and scientific modernities, and certain kinds of achievements, such as industrial and scientific advancements, are identified with Europeans,” Ms Parameswaran says.
In the modern era, she says, imported American movies, TV shows and music videos has further reinforced these “colourist” stereotypes.
“In its own way, colourism could also instil ideas of white supremacy in Indian children, making them see people from Africa and African-Americans as inferior,” Ms Parameswaran says. “Colourism and racism are intertwined.”
Devdutt Pattanaik, who writes popular books on Hindu mythology, says that even when the epics describe a deity as dark-skinned, illustrators tend to avoid depicting them in that way.
The Sanskrit word Krishna means “dark,” referring to his complexion, Pattanaik wrote in 2009.
“Somehow, an unnaturally blue Krishna was preferred over a naturally dark Krishna,” he wrote.
These steep barriers complicate Nil’s project. When several of his models withdrew, he had to reach out to friends and family.
One deity, a young Balamurugan – the god of war – was his sister’s son, standing stockstill and smiling. Another was the team’s make-up artist.
But the online reception to his project, Nil says, has made it all worthwhile. The photos have gone viral on Indian social media.
“That was always the point, to reach as many people as possible,” he says. “The idea wasn’t to stir up controversy. It wasn’t to put down people with fair skin.
“It was only to ask a valid question: why should dark skin be considered inferior? That’s what I think we’ve done.”
Lighter skin is viewed as a status symbol for the middle and upper castes, who did not have to do manual labour RADHIKA PARAMESWARANE Professor, University of Indiana