Skin Colour in India vis-à-vis Bleaching Syndrome Pathology: Augmenting Social Work Curriculum Content

Abstract

The issue of skin colour has eluded the Indian social work curriculum as an insignificant matter of trivia. However, despite the fact skin colour remains of Indian cultural and social significance. Subsequently, the skin colour issue is then manifested by the bleaching syndrome in stealth inclusive of gender, health and economics. The dynamics of this manifestation are commensurate with dark-skinned Indians in the Indian society at-large. However, reference to the bleaching syndrome is iconoclastic in the Indian scenario and public acknowledgement of it per skin colour is a cultural taboo. While assessing social work curriculum content in an alien Western context, native Indian criteria such as skin colour are rendered vague. Skin colour variables extending from the various sectors of Indian society are then dismissed from curriculum study as insignificant curriculum content. A viable solution might consider inclusion of the bleaching syndrome per skin colour as required curriculum content in Indian social work education to resolve the problem.