By Pamposh Dhar | Dark is Beautiful campaigner

We are bombarded by print ads and TV commercials all day long. So much so that we hardly pay heed to them any more. But when “King Khan” himself shows up on the TV screen in our home, we sit up and take notice. He is India’s most popular star, the heart-throb of millions. In TV interviews, and even in most of his films, he comes across as a down-to-earth, sensitive man. We love him for that.

But now, with the Fair and Handsome commercial he is making some of us very uncomfortable. A few friends find my views objectionable. Mostly this seems to stem from the feeling that SRK is a superstar, someone we adore, and therefore someone we cannot possibly find fault with or give advice to. Our love for SRK inhibits us from criticizing him, but let’s face it – the Fair and Handsome commercial sends a clear message that to be handsome or successful you must be fair. 

He is a superstar, true. But we are the people who have made him a superstar and we are the people who keep him at the top. We are the consumers of his films. Of course, we do that because of his considerable talents and the hard work he puts into his films. But we are the ones who decide if we like what we see and hear. 

So, when he acts – with his usual elan – in a commercial that enhances a mindset that makes little children feel unloved and young men feel inadequate, then we can tell him that we do not like what he is doing. We can ask him to stop lending his megastar status to keep alive an essentially racist attitude. We can tell him we do not love his doing this, even if we still love him in his films. 

We do not want him to waste our love, the fan following that keeps him at the top, on strengthening an attitude that is clearly wrong and does so much damage to the self-esteem of men and women. Worse, it is part of the mindset that makes us cruel to little children, making them feel unloved and insecure. (You can find some heart-rending stories in this blog and on the campaigns Facebook.)

I’d like to invite you to join me and the thousands of people who have already signed a petition asking Fair & Handsome and Shah Rukh Khan to take down this commercial. Let’s tell our hero to practice what he recently preached on his own Facebook page. I quote a post from 22 July: “You were born to be real, not to be perfect. You are here to be you, not to be what someone else wants you to be”…Gurumantra i was taught

Quite right, SRK! We are here to be ourselves, and we are perfect just the way the Maker made us. Please don’t try to improve on His handiwork!

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