From: raja@magic (Raja Seth)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian
Subject: Re: Fair and lovely: Remember that face cream ?
Keywords: color skin
Date: 21 Aug 92 12:56:24 GMT
Reply-To: raja@ctron.com
Organization: Cabletron Systems Inc.,


To be safe I repost the copyright statement:
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                   Copyright 1992 Newspaper Publishing PLC
                                The Independent

                             August  2, 1992, Sunday

Notebook: Michael Jackson: beyond the pale

By FIAMMETTA ROCCO

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	writes :
	....
    	So Michael Jackson wants to be seen as a white boy.
	....


Don't know about Michael Jackson, but ....

	High-caste Indians
	whisper that the low-born have irregular, coarse and fleshy faces. 
	And the very word caste comes from the Portuguese for ''pure stock''. 
	It is linked, etymologically, to the Latin for ''chaste''.

When did we decide to use the etmylogical analysis based on Portuguese and
Latin for words of Indian-origin ? Use Sanskrit, if needed.
Another one of those careless western distortion with-out regard for a
proper understanding.

	Sir Herbert Hope Risley, director of ethnography in the Indian Civil Service
	spent most of his life measuring the noses of thousands of people in northern
	India. His obsession produced Risley's Orbito-Nasal Index. With his calipers,
	Risley found (at least to his satisfaction) that people from higher castes had
	narrower, sharper noses than those from lower castes.

Some of our priests of the highest castes in India have the largest and widest
noses I have ever seen !  Now let us see, the people of African tribes have the
longest legs. SO we should say that anyone who has a long leg MUST be african !
Certain birds I can think of have very long legs. I wonder what we should
say about them ....
 
	   Has Michael Jackson read Risley? Almost certainly not. Neither have the
	young men and women who advertise for marriage partners every Sunday in the
	Hindustan Times. One after the other, the small ads call for spouses, with
	''wheat-coloured complexion and sharp features''. Even a Green Card isn't as
	important as a fair skin.

BTW, models in France have their lips made thick by surgical procedures. They
call them 'fuller lips' !!! That is the fashion. I wonder if they are trying to
look like Africans...hmmmmmmm.......

...all the ramblings about Michael Jackson deleted ....

This has to do with the power of western media. The eastern media is behind
time.
That's all. Wait until the tide changes, people's prejudices will also change.
Don't know how hair styles change with time ?

Some of the most beautiful women I have seen are from the most interior
regions of Tamil Nadu.  But these women have the sharpest noses....!
but darkest complexion ! Must be the most beautiful women on earth, then.....:)

To add more, people of the west didn't think much of nose-rings and ear-rings
before...now it is a fashion ! Add anklets to the list. Are the
white-westerners
APEing the eastern .... ?

Some African tribes used to pierce so many of their body parts and wear
ornaments. That used to be a makeup for them, I suppose.

cheers....raja

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|
| Raja Seth : raja@balrog.ctron.com
|
| All opinions expressed in this article are my own. 
| The company I work for has no claim or liability
| to this article in any implicit or explicit form. 
|
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|
| Morality is self-imposed, legality is enforced.
| In the modern world, legality is replacing morality !
| Or is it really modern ?
|
| I hate legality for it makes life more complicated. 
| But what I do with my morality is my own business.
|
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Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian