INTRODUCTION
Picture this: a young woman looks sad, unsuccessful, and unloved. She applies a cream. Her skin becomes lighter. Suddenly she has a job, a boyfriend and a smile. The message is not subtle. It never was. And yet, for decades, this is exactly what played on Indian television screens, in magazines and now on Instagram feeds, with barely a legal eyebrow raised.
Fair & Lovely. Clean & Clear. Garnier Light. The names change, the formula stays the same: darker skin is a problem, and we are selling the solution. In 2020, amid a global reckoning on race following the Black Lives Matter movement, Hindustan Unilever quietly renamed Fair & Lovely to Glow & Lovely. The product itself did not change. The name did.
Which brings us to the real question, not whether these ads are offensive (most people agree they are), but whether they are legal. And if they are legal, should they be?
WHAT ARE THESE ADS ACTUALLY SAYING?
Skin lightening advertising in India operates on a simple but deeply damaging premise: that fair skin is more desirable, more successful and more worthy of love than dark skin. This is not a recent idea, but it is rooted in centuries of colonial conditioning and caste-based discrimination, where lighter skin was associated with higher social status.
Research has consistently shown that colourism, i.e., discrimination based on skin tone within the same racial or ethnic group causes measurable psychological harm, particularly to young women and girls.[1]
When an advertisement tells a dark-skinned woman that she needs to be lighter to get a job or find a partner, it is not just selling a cream. It is reinforcing a hierarchy that has real consequences for real people.
The question law must answer is, ‘Does reinforcing a harmful social hierarchy count as discrimination?’ And who, if anyone, is responsible for stopping it?
WHAT DOES INDIAN LAW SAY?
India does not have a standalone anti-discrimination law in the way many Western countries do. The Constitution under Article 15 prohibits discrimination by the state on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.[2] But Article 15 binds the government, not private companies. A multinational corporation running a colourism-based advertisement is not the state, and Article 15 does not reach it.
The primary legal framework governing advertising in India is the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995, and the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) Code.[3] The ASCI Code requires that advertisements must not be offensive to generally accepted standards of public decency and must not promote discrimination. The Cable TV Rules explicitly prohibit advertisements that are likely to encourage practices that are derogatory to women.
On paper, this sounds like enough. In practice, it has done almost nothing to curb skin lightening advertising.
III. THE 2020 MOMENT AND WHAT CHANGED (AND DID NOT)
In June 2020, following global protests after the death of George Floyd in the United States, several major companies announced they would rethink their skin lightening product lines. Johnson & Johnson stopped selling its Clean & Clear Fairness line in India.[4] Hindustan Unilever renamed Fair & Lovely. L’Oréal announced it would remove words like ‘whitening’ and ‘lightening’ from its products.
These were corporate decisions, not legal ones. No Indian court ordered these changes. No regulator penalised these companies. The companies moved because of reputational pressure, which tells us something important: the law was not the reason they changed, and the law would not have forced them to.
The ASCI did take some action. In 2014, it issued guidelines stating that advertisements should not communicate that a particular skin tone is superior or inferior.[5] But ASCI is a self-regulatory body. It has no statutory power to fine companies or pull advertisements off air. Its decisions are recommendations, not orders. And recommendation, as any lawyer knows, is not law.
THE DRUGS AND MAGIC REMEDIES ACT – A LAW THAT EXISTS BUT IS RARELY USED.
There is actually a law that directly applies here and is almost never discussed in this context. The Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, 1954, prohibits advertisements that claim to alter skin colour.[6] Section 3 of the Act specifically bars advertisements that claim a drug or remedy can change the complexion or make skin fairer.
This is a remarkable provision. It has been on the books for over seventy years. And yet Fair & Lovely ran prime-time television advertisements for decades claiming exactly that their product would make your skin fairer with virtually no enforcement action taken under this Act.
The gap between what the law says and what actually happens is perhaps the most honest summary of India’s approach to regulating skin lightening advertising. The law exists. But the enforcement does not.
IS IT RACIST? DOES THAT WORD EVEN HAVE LEGAL MEANING IN INDIA?
This is the sharpest question and the hardest one to answer. In the United Kingdom, the Equality Act 2010 prohibits discrimination on grounds of race, which has been interpreted to include colour-based discrimination. Advertisers there face genuine legal risk if their content promotes colourism.
In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission has the power to act against deceptive advertising, and civil rights law has occasionally been extended to colourism in employment contexts.[7]
India has no equivalent. There is no law that explicitly names colourism as a form of discrimination. There is no regulatory body with the power and the will to take on a company like Hindustan Unilever for running an advertisement that tells dark-skinned women they are inadequate.
So, to answer the question in the title: yes, skin-lightening advertising can be and frequently is racist in its messaging. And yes, it is almost entirely legal under current Indian law. Both things are true at the same time, and that is precisely the problem.
WHAT SHOULD CHANGE?
The solution is not simply to ban all skin-lightening products; that raises its own questions about personal choice and the limits of paternalistic law. But there is a clear case for stronger regulation of how these products are advertised.
First, the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act needs to actually be enforced. If a product claims to alter skin colour and the law already says such claims are prohibited, regulators should act on that law rather than pretending it does not exist.
Second, India needs an explicit statutory prohibition on advertisements that portray a particular skin tone as inferior or undesirable along the lines of what the UK has under the Equality Act.[8]
Third, ASCI needs either statutory backing or replacement by a regulator with real powers such as the ability to pull advertisements, impose fines and hold companies accountable.
And finally, there is the broader cultural conversation that law alone cannot have. Advertising does not create colourism from scratch. It reflects and amplifies prejudices that already exist in society. Changing the law is necessary. Changing what we consider beautiful is the harder, longer work.
VII. CONCLUSION
There is something deeply uncomfortable about an industry that profits from telling people their natural skin tone is not good enough and does so legally, openly and on prime-time television. The law has the tools to address this. It has largely chosen not to use them.
Renaming Fair & Lovely to Glow & Lovely did not make the underlying message go away. It just made the company look less bad for a news cycle. Real change requires what the rebranding avoided: accountability.
As someone about to study law, what strikes me is how often the absence of enforcement is itself a legal choice. Someone decided not to use the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act. Someone decided ASCI guidelines were enough. Those decisions have consequences, and the people who bear them are not the ones in the boardroom.
Author(s) Name: Chhavi Poplani (National Law School of India University, Bengaluru)
References:
[1] Joanna Rondilla and Paul Spickard, Is Lighter Better? Skin-Tone Discrimination Among Asian Americans (Rowman & Littlefield 2007).
[2] Constitution of India 1950, art 15.
[3] Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act 1995; see also Advertising Standards Council of India, ‘The ASCI Code for Self-Regulation in Advertising’ (ASCI, 2021).
[4] Johnson & Johnson, ‘Johnson & Johnson to Discontinue Neutrogena Fine Fairness and Clean & Clear Fairness Product Lines’ (Press Release, 19 June 2020).
[5] Advertising Standards Council of India, ‘Guidelines for Advertising of Skin Lightening or Fairness Improvement Products’ (ASCI, 2014).
[6] Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act 1954, s 3.
[7] Walker v Secretary of State for Social Services [1981] All ER 704; see also Malone v Ameriquest Mortgage Co. 621 F Supp 2d 134 (ED Pa 2009).
[8] Equality Act 2010 (UK), s 9.