Abhay Deol is mad as hell and he won’t take it anymore!

A month ago, ‘Nepotism’ had become the buzzword in Bollywood when Kangana Ranaut opened the debate by calling Karan Johar the ‘flag-bearer of nepotism’ in Bollywood on the show Koffee With Karan.

Now, Abhay Deol with his recent Facebook posts has successfully made ‘racism’ the buzzword.

A few weeks ago, a mob ganged upon young Nigerian men in a Greater Noida mall and physically assaulted them as the perpetrators believed the Nigerians to have a played a role in the death of a local. Soon enough, individual accounts of racism faced by Africans in India began to gain traction all across social media. A question was raised: Are Indians racist?

As the debate went on, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Tarun Vijay was caught with a foot in his mouth when he said, “If we were racist, why would we have all the entire south…Tamil, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra…why do we live with them? We have black people around us” in a televised video.

Abhay Deol today took to Facebook to highlight how fairness cream ads perpetuate and encourage racism and disdain for dark skin. What was notable was that these ads featured prominent Bollywood stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Sonam Kapoor, Sidharth Malhotra, Deepika Padukone and Shahid Kapoor. Abhay did not mince words and called these actors out as well.

Here goes… Abhay Deol’s taandav on Facebook. Shah Rukh Khan and his mardo waali fairness cream wasn’t spared too.

Finally, Abhay Deol put out a statement on Facebook:

There’s a lot more of these campaigns that are blatantly, and sometimes subtly, selling you the idea that whiter skin is better than darker skin. No one at the top of their game in any field is going to tell you that it is demeaning, false, and racist.

You have to see that for yourself. You have to stop buying into the idea that a particular shade is better than others. Unfortunately if you look at matrimonial ads you will see how entrenched in our psyche this belief is. We even use the word ‘dusk’ to describe the colour of someones skin!While an individual may not be able to change this attitude in his/her community, he/she can at least start with the family.

At the same time, the actor also highlighted how celebrities like Nandita Das, Ranbir Kapoor, Kangana Ranaut and Randeep Hooda refused money that was offered to them to star in fairness cream ads.

Quite clearly, Abhay Deol has began a very important dialogue. What remains to be seen is how these actors respond.