Letter written by a 15 yr old Vidyakshetra student to the Ministry of Health
& Family Welfare to Ban Fairness Creams.

I am a student of Vidyakshetra Bangalore. I recently heard that you banned advertisements promoting fairness creams. Hope you would help us in resolving a more
deeper issue as well. My appeal to you is to ban fairness creams also.

After Britishers left India, they left us with a feeling of difference between dark skin and fair skin. Today, prevalent citizen’s sentiment is that Being fair skinned is being beautiful which is wrong. Due to this mindset, many dark skinned people are not respected. There is also a class
difference created in these years- “Dark skinned are low class and fair skinned are high class”.

People don’t understand that physical beauty is only skin deep and real beauty is inner beauty for which you don’t need to be fair skinned. Instead of working towards
changing this mindset, some people work towards making dark skinned people fair. These people are from the fairness cream businesses. They introduced fairness
cream into the market. At first it seemed like a gift to the dark skinned people, but these creams reduce the melanin content in our body which protects our skin from harsh sun
rays. Melanin makes our skin dark. If that is removed, our skin gets fairer and fairer, giving pathway to the harsh UV rays to harm our skin. Over exposure to UV rays is
dangerouse and can lead us even up to skin cancers. Despite knowing these facts and side effects, people use these creams. In foreign countries, people spend so much
money to get their skins dark by exposing themselves to harmful UV rays. They feel they are too fair and they are not happy with it.

My appeal to one and all is to be happy with what we
have.

So Sir, I request you to ban these creams. Once they are banned, gradually, over a few generations, we can hope for a change in the social mindset. Then, hopefully darker
skinned people will be treated in a much more respectable way. This is a dream & I hope it doesnt just remain a dream. Hope you will fulfill my request.

Yours Truly,
Srinidhi Sridharan.