Case for colour
- Bombay Asia Publishing House 1964
- 208p.
PERHAPS EVERYDAY (well! if not everyday, at least once every week) either a book or an article on colour prejudice is being published. Today is my turn. Why have I rashly ventured into this overwritten field ? The public have a right to demand an explanation. Is it merely due to the vain desire to see myself in print or have I really something new to say ? I plead guilty to both charges. Like all authors I love to see myself in print - not only in print but securely bound in hard cover, with dreams of a more paying paper-back to follow. But I think I have also some slight contribution to make both by way of presentation as well as addition. I have sougKt to reduce the scattered and bewildering array of knowledge on this subject into some kind of systematic and easily read- able form. Of course many have done this before me but let me hope that I have at least displayed some originality in the use of the scissors and the glue-pot. Concerning colour prejudice in Britain and more so in India, I have a work to my credit. References to this will be found in various parts of the book and more exclusively in Chapters 4 and 5. I have had three types of readers in my mind in writing this book. To begin with, the enquiring layman and his first cousin, the man in the street. But so many books are now being written specifically for their benefit that the cousins have become somewhat suspicious of the solicitude of authors. So as a potential market they are not so good as they once used to be. However I do hope they will rally round in this case. Authors have to live. Secondly, the psychologist - the student, not the expert. The expert can read and understand all the learned tomes but the student likes to have the stuff dished up to him on a silver plate in words of one syllable. I have striven to do my best. I trust that he finds the dish not too unpalatable. Lastly, the social worker. Many social workers in the field of prejudice are rather weak in the theory part. They have too much faith in appeals to good nature and cups of tea. Social work will become more effec- tive if facts are understood and evaluated correctly before plunging into practical work. I have tried to provide this theoretical background. One has to think of many reasons for writing a book today. Publishers seem to have an equal number of reasons for rejecting the same. As long as our approach to the problem of prejudice is an emotional and anecdotal one, little good can be done. The first step in the right direction is an accurate knowledge of things as they exist and the mechanisms behind them. We tend to think of colour prejudice in terms of a rigid dicho- tomy black and white. This is not true. There are a large number of gradations and varieties. There is also a belief that colour prejudice is the monopoly of the Republic of South Africa and the United States. This has created in the minds of some of the Eastern nations a dangerous state of complacency. There has been colour prejudice in India, though it had never reached the serious stage that it has in some other countries. I have devoted two chapters to the problem in India as it existed in the past and as it exists in the present. In another chapter I have surveyed the position of Indians abroad.