NLSIU Bangalore first-year student Chirayu Jain sued Hindustan Pencils for alleged racism by labelling their peachy pink-coloured crayon as “skin” coloured in the crayons box set, which the company sells under the brand Colorama, reported the Hindu.
Jain has filed in the Bangalore Urban Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum for compensation of Rs 10 lakh, including Rs 1 lakh for hurting his sentiments and Rs 9 lakh to the Consumer Welfare Fund, from the owner of the Nataraj and Apsara stationery brands. He told the paper: “I have been researching the issue of skin colour and the resultant differentiation for over a year now. It is in the course of my study that I stumbled upon this extremely offensive product.”
Comments
adding to what you said, what did the student show as "deficiency of service"
notwithstanding the skin colour pencil, are you half-educated?? Indians are among the most racially diverse peoples and racist people on earth. They continue to put full efforts to ensure their respective racial boundaries with regionalism casteism. If we were a such homogenous community as you claim to be, we wouldn't be such a pathetic nation and could have developed as much as an european power/japan.
Name the crayons as follows:
1. white (Skin Colour, as applicable to the Nordic Countries and Micheal Jackson and Robert Pattinson in Twilight)
2. The actual skin colur (Skin Colour, as applicable to North America and Europe, or if you have never been out in the sun or if you use fair and handsome etc.)
3. Yellow (Skin Colour, as applicable in Asia, other than the Indian sub-continent and Russia et al)
4. Brown (Skin colour, as applicable to India (other than those falling in the latter categories), Pakistan, Bangladesh, South America, Middle East, Aborigines, Fairer part of Africa)
5. Black (Skin colour, as applicable to most parts of Africa, most people in south India, Sri-Lanka and Michael Jackson (before his plastic surgery).
These Crayon companies need to take legal advise in naming the colours! Dumb Idiots!
How can you be so lame? You must also be the Complainant's classmate :-/
I want to burn myself for all that is wrong on this planet.
This makes a decent argument:
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/blogs/blog-by-the-way/article4796918.ece
The only real criticism I'd raise is that if 'skin' colour crayons are wrong, then someone should also find some way to challenge 'fair and lovely' branding and the like.
This makes a decent argument:
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/blogs/blog-by-the-way/article4796918.ece
The only real criticism I'd raise is that if 'skin' colour crayons are wrong, then someone should also find some way to challenge 'fair and lovely' branding and the like.[/quote]
i agree about the fair and lovely branding bit....
Not sure either why there's so much outrage or disagreement about this case.
I watched a video recently where young American children were asked to assign characteristics to two dolls - one fair, and one dark. It was stupefying to see kids associate smart, beautiful and other positive characteristics to the lighter doll, whereas naughty, ugly, bad were associated with the dark doll. Even more disturbing was that many of the children who were part of the experiment were themselves African American. Sure, you could factor in America's history with slavery and racial discrimination while judging this experiment, but it cannot be disputed that we owe it to each other to bring up our children without 'colouring' their world view.
That said, I don't see this complaint garnering any success in court. It doesn't have to, though. It has accomplished what Mr. Jain sought to achieve - to get people talking about racism, and to motivate the crayon company to change how they go about branding their products. A word of advice if Chirayu is reading this... there will always be critics to defeat a move meant well. The trick therefore is to minimize their arsenal. A token amount of Re. 1 as a claim would have sufficed as a claim. Next time, perhaps.
More power to your elbows.