“I get a bit annoyed when Americans look at the issue of color and caste in India from a US perspective. It's a 5000 year old culture, one with very different reasons for why things are the way they are. Colorism isn't the way it is there for the same reason race relations are in this country. Caste isn't the same as color. Caste isn't the same as class. They can overlap, but they don't always. It's headache-inducing complicated.”I was intrigued by her unique perspective, as I fall under the category of having a very limited American perspective and invited her to expand upon her comment with an article on caste and colorism.
First, a little about our guest blogger, in her own words:
Sonu, better known as slowburn online, is a South Asian emigre who has lived in the US for twenty years. Married to a decidedly American man with blue collar roots, mother of two, writer for hire, rapidly approaching 40. In India she'd be a radical lefty. Here, living near the nation's capital, she's a socially-progressive and fiscally conservative cynical codger.
Thank you for sharing your insight, Sonu!
Caste Versus Colorism
By Sonu
“So caste is like race?” I can't tell you how many times I've gotten this question. Short answer no, caste and race are not the same. So here's a thumbnail stab at it, from my point of view.
Race is a fairly recent social construct that has reduced and sometimes oppressed entire groups of people based on how they looked, regardless of their internal differences. Caste is age old, based on occupation, and has been enforced by endogamy, if not flat out discrimination or tyranny.
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On the upside, everyone has a place in a caste-based society- a community, a guild, a way of life, a network of employment.
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The downside is grimly clear. Traditionally, you did what you were born into, whether you liked it or not. And the grossly unfair cosmic joke is on you if you are born to a losing lottery. Because you may well be at the bottom of the social barrel - poor, dispossessed, demeaned, and limited to society's crumbs – for generations. 
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This is what violent revolutions are made of. But unlike race, you can't necessarily tell someone's caste by how they look. 
And then comes colorism, the preference for fair skin. It can be hard to see difference between colorism and race. But although colorism is a heavy thread in the Indian social fabric, it didn't negate or automatically disenfranchise those who are dark. Nor does it automatically correlate to caste.
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Here's the thing about colorism: dark doesn't automatically mean ugly in India – Krishna, the beloved playboy of the Hindu pantheon, whose name in fact translates to “dark,” is dark as thunderclouds, dark as midnight. He's the original tall, dark, and handsome. In fact, he's so dark he's blue. 
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Case in point, my father, a Brahmin. (This pic is not actually my father, he's U.R. Ananthamurthy – a famous writer. Basically, Brahmins don't “look” like anything special.) 
Dad is at the tippy top of India's caste system but he's dark enough that my American-born son (who doesn't get to see my folks all that often) once saw an older African American gentleman at the supermarket and asked what grandpa was doing back in the states. But in nearly 70 years, my father has never once had employment, residence, raises, or club memberships withheld because of how he looks. That said, he's male - men generally get to care less about how they look. Not so true for women.
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In the here and now, we Indians want largely to be fair. Matrimonial ads will specify that the groom or bride seeking a match is “wheatish.” Which basically means, “s/he isn't fair but not dark either.” And dark is definitely a drawback for a girl's matrimonial prospects. Blondes have more fun, thinner is better, lighter skin is prettier. But Indians don't want to be white; we have enormous pride in our culture. 
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But it's a plus to be lighter skinned in the absence of gorgeousness, a la Padma Lakshmi. 
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Or Aishwarya Rai, the most beautiful woman in the world, who is stunning, in no small part because she's fair skinned and light eyed.
It makes her exotic to Indians and I've often wondered if the country would have gone so totally nuts for her if she looked more like me, several shades darker and with everyday brown eyes. It's a question for the ages, like Cleopatra's nose.
Colorism, caste and class – they intersect, but they are not one and the same. Nor does any one factor automatically determine the other two. Class is a function of money, which has nothing to do with caste. And even then, as the new rich can attest to in any society, money doesn't mean you automatically have class. My family isn't wealthy, and yet no one in India would consider us remotely middle-class even though that's where our finances squarely place us. We're more like impoverished upper class aristocrats, where everyone works for a living.
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Famous case of marrying out. Indira Nehru, a very high caste brahmin, marrying Feroze Gandhi, who wasn't a Hindu, or even, for that matter, a particularly wealthy Parsi. My friend married an India, but she also married out. And a big plus point in her favor to smooth things over was, you guessed it, her fairness. 
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Go to any Indian store in the US and look behind the counter. Yep. That's definitely a Fair and Lovely skin lightening cream back there. I think of them as the Twinkies of the Indian store. Should the nuclear winter ever be upon us, I guarantee there will be a Fair And Lovely at your corner Indian store, covered in a thick layer of dust, probably just as chemically potent as the day the product rolled off the line.
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In an odd development, in the new India, the one on the upswing with the emerging economy and infinite possibilities for the first time since the decline of the Mughal Empire, there is a strange new gender parity. My father never had to worry about how he looked. He was male in a patriarchal male-dominated society. If he was a good provider, so much the better. But in today's India, as Rachel discovered in the Fair and Handsome commercial, men have to care about looks too. Frankly, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
What are your thoughts? Reactions? Does anyone experience something like this in your part of the world?