When recently Samantha Akkineni got a mouthful from trolls for colouring herself to play a Tamilian rebel in the smash series The Family Man , I remembered the 1960s’ star Rajendra Kumar in a film called Gora Aur Kala where he played a double role , one lightskinned the other dark, with equal aplomb.
For playing ‘Kala’ Kumar, one of the most empowered heroes of the 1960s, was smeared in bootpolish from head to toe…well ,not exactly head to toe. But every visible part of his body.
Cut to Simi Garewal in Satyajit Ray’s Arayanar Dn Ratri and Deepti Naval in Jagmohan Mundhra’s Kamla. Both played tribal women and were required to tone down their light skin by many shades before facing the camera.
And before Samantha was accused of brownfacing her character there was Bhumi Pednekar in Bala,painted all back to look “ugly” as per the definitions of the wedding market.
But the worst case of colour-shaming I’ve seen was in Vikas Bahl’s Super 30, that bombastic over-burdened biopic on Bihari maths genius Anand Kumar, with Hrithik Roshan playing the role in a blackened avatar and the worst Bihar accent I had ever seen.
In fact being Bihari I was so affronted by Hrithik’s “Bihari” accent I wrote an open letter to Mr Roshan:
“Dear Mr Hrithik Roshan,
Have you seen that amazing 26-year old British actor Josh O’Connor do a Yorkshire accent in that masterpiece God’s Own Country?No? You should. Josh, for your information, is not from Yorkshire. He worked for weeks and months with a dialogue coach so that he didn’t sound like a young man imitating a young man from Yorkshire.How many days did you spend in Bihar with the man you play in Super 30 before arriving so smugly at your …well, abominable disgusting Bihari accent in Super 30? I have to admit I’ve never really been impressed by your transformative efforts on screen. They ring phony labored and artificial. But what you’ve done in Super 30 is worse. You have parodied the whole state and its people ,lumped them together in your own version of Lalu’s la-la land.This is not a man from Bihar speaking. It is YOUR definition of a Bihari man, based on a peek-a-boo perception probably gleaned from the social media, all tanned up with bootpolish, drawling out your words as though they are emerging from that empty bootpolish container after you have finished painting yourself.Worse still is the fact that Anand Kumar is going around endorsing your crude efforts at being Bihari, calling you a ‘Greek God’ and too handsome to play Anand Kumar when in fact Anand should be pulling you up for insulting an entire community and state which has given India some of the best brains and talent including Anand Kumar.The damage is not irreparable, Mr Roshan. You can easily re-dub all your lines. Sit down with a voice coach who will show you how not to ham on the soundtrack. What you need to is put more ‘Josh’ into your speaking lines.Come to think of it, I am certain Josh O’Connor would do a better Bihari accent than you, though I am not too sure about your Yorkshire accent.But really, I am being too harsh . It’s not your fault. We pamper and spoil our actors , over-praise them to the skies until they begin to believe they are God’s chosen one. One hit, and a Siddharth Chaturvedi goes around strutting as though he has arrived. If you were not corrected while speaking for Anand Kumar, well blame the spineless disgraced director who must have been so grateful to have you in his film.Until our directors stop being slaves to the star system, there will be no Josh O’Connor in Indian cinema.”
I even suggested that Hrithik re-dub his “Bihari” accent. But the producers assured me this is the way the real Anand Kumar spoke,and looked.
This was completely untrue. Anand Kumar is a fair-skinned Bihari who speaks Hindi without what’s known as a Bihari accent. So what was that?
When I met Anand Kumar after the film’s release he revealed that a lot of what was shown in the film including his affair with the girl played by Mrunal Kulkarni, was fiction. The “Bihari” accent and skin-colour were also part of the fictional fabric in that illusory yarn.
I am still to figure out why the mathematician was shown as dark-skinned when he is not. Perhaps the film’s makers in all their wisdom, thought audiences wouldn’t accept a Bihari without a thick accent from Lalu Land and a dark complexion to go with the accent. When it comes to cultural separatism you really can’t separate Hitler from his moustache.
