Patanjali Publishes A Newspaper Ad That Says Dark Complexion Is A ‘Skin Ailment’

Gore gore, gori gori, chittiyan kalayain, gori-chhitti, sushil, sundar. bohot fair and bohot jyada lovely.

Welcome to India, guys. Ain’t nobody as skin-colour obsessed as us. That’s so infuriating at times. But, yeah just these melanin-talks go way over the heads and people are like:

What?? What are you talking about, bruh?

When it comes to preferring a fairer skin tone, there are many lurking amidst us who would raise their hands and say, “I do prefer fair-skinned people, TBH!”

But never have I ever chanced upon any advert that deemed dark complexion as a skin ailment.

Selling their, “beauty cream” (duh! there are beauty standards set by society and Indians need to follow ?), Patanjali’s description of the benefits of the cream is something like this:

The ad was published in Deccan Chronicle on December 17, 2017. And the description reads:

Uh, what?!

Posted by a Twitter user, Karthik, called out how Patanjali is doing exactly what it called out MNCs for.

No Baba Ramdev… 'dark complexion' is NOT a skin ailment. Did Tarun Vijay write your ad? pic.twitter.com/laHsUVjFGL

— Karthik (@beastoftraal) January 8, 2018

toeing the line of MNC beauty brands in framing dark skin as a problem. Only difference – MNC brands have, over time, become clever about how they state this in their communication. Here, Patanjali openly calls 'dark complexion' as a 'skin ailment'. This is severely ironic

— Karthik (@beastoftraal) January 8, 2018

message despite seemingly being against the 'MNC' brands.

— Karthik (@beastoftraal) January 8, 2018

Netizens couldn’t agree more and expressed their anguish over it.

People called it outrageous.

Outrageous. As if his skin is super white!

So he should sell it as a beauty thing instead of an ailment like the rest of the corporates? What you are saying his he needs a better ad agency and lawyers.

— Bala (@sbchandar) January 8, 2018

And, some had sarcasm on point.

Wondering whether the ingredients include those famous imported #mushrooms #fairnesscream #notfair 🤔🤔🤔

— John K Philip (@johnkphilip) January 8, 2018

Exactly, our point.

AAARGH

— Nandita Iyer (@saffrontrail) January 8, 2018

Like, I am not fair and I am not as dark, but I am brown, so I have an ailment? :O In fact, wrinkles too are natural and not ailments, unless we are talking about Wrinkly Skin Syndrome. When did science declare ‘dark complexion’ as a ‘skin ailment’? Did we miss some memo here, Patanjali?

It is highly offensive to people with high-melanin content and we wonder what Patanjali has to say about it.

Update:

Swami Ramdev took to Twitter to clarify that it was a translation error. He wrote,

हमने Skin Complications (त्वचा के विकार), शब्द approve किया था जो translation/copy-writing में ग़लती से बदल गया। मैंने कभी रंग-भेद की बात नहीं की और हमेशा क़ुदरती सौंदर्य को निखारने के आयुर्वेदिक उपाय बताये हैं। कुछ लोग एक शब्द को पकड़ कर विवाद पैदा करने का प्रयास कर रहे हैं https://t.co/au3odkJ6uH

— स्वामी रामदेव (@yogrishiramdev) January 9, 2018

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