Fair and lowly

If you go by the number of fairness cream commercials on television, you get a fair idea of how proud we are of who we are. There is a whole industry out there that promises to make us white and superior at the price of a tube of cream. Check any matrimonial ad and it's a fair Gujarati or a fair Brahmin girl. Even our movies and music refer to beauty as "gori".
To be dark skinned is a class thing as much as a caste thing. In India's dark ages, dark skin was associated with the lower castes but now, in more evolved times, it's almost a handicap. I routinely come across people dismissing other Indians as "black" like it's some disease. We simply are the most racist people in the world because we persecute our own on degrees of darkness. No proud African will ever use fairness cream to become white. Neither should we, really.