“As a four-year-old, I apparently asked my mother whether she could put me back in her womb and bring me out again, all white and pretty. I have lived for over 50 years buried under that narrative of not being a colour that was good enough.”

The haunting Facebook post by Sarada Muraleedharan, Kerala’s chief secretary, in response to a disparaging comment on her blackness, must be marked as a significant moment in our public culture. She has given words to what crores of Indian women (and many men) must feel every day, the torture they suffer through their lives. You need inner strength to acknowledge this to yourself. You need courage to say this in public. And you need privilege, the strength to speak and the assurance of being heard. If privilege could redeem itself, here is an example.

Exactly 65 years ago, in March 1960, Rammanohar Lohia penned an extraordinary essay, ‘Skin Colour and Beauty’ (part of his collection Interval During Politics), a pioneering critique of the “tyranny of colour”. Lohia sought to bust any association of female beauty with fairness: “The woman who loves and is loved radiates the beauty of the starlit sky, whether she is dark or fair.”

Reading Muraleedharan’s 305-word post with Lohia’s essay reminds us that the craze for light skin is not a light business. Understanding the prejudice against the black offers a window to the enduring nature of cultural, social, economic and political inequalities in our times. A recent academic volume, The Routledge Companion to Beauty Politics, captures many themes in this conversation. Maxine Leeds Craig sums it up in the opening lines of this volume: “Beauty is political. It is the prize claimed by the victors of struggles over human worth. The sting of ugliness is a weapon used by those at the top of social hierarchies to assert superiority over groups they deem inferior and therefore........

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