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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: Ram, Ram, it's Obama Ram, Ram, it's Obama Anyone familiar with Indian iconography would have been able to predict that Barack Obama was colour-coded to triumph over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic nomination for the US presidency. And it's got nothing to do with American male chauvinism (which won't countenance a woman in the White House), or with the calculus of psephology. The reason that Indian mythological iconography would favour Obama is because he is dark. In the Indian mind, black may not be beautiful (it certainly isn't if the sales graphs of skin whitening creams is an indication), but it is certainly perceived to be powerful. The Indic pantheon boasts many dark-hued deities and heroes. Vishnu, Krishna, Shiva and Ram are all dark-skinned, true-blue divinities in the literal sense. While the goddesses and heroines (Durga, Saraswati, Lakshmi, Sita) are largely fair, there are two notable exceptions: Kali, the most fearsome embodiment of shakti, is jet black; and Draupadi, the Indic counterpart of Helen of Troy, is dusky complexioned, her other name being Krishna, a synonym for dark-skinned. Why should there have been this equation between supernal power and dark pigmentation? It has been suggested, in a flight of poetic fancy, that blue, being the colour of preference of the sky, is also the colour of infinity and transcendence (Meghavarnam Shubhaangam). That's why subcontinental mythology sings the blues so often, with its riffs on Vishnu and Ram, Shiva and Krishna. Neat. But social anthropology might suggest other reasons for this emphasis on the potency of darkness: that it reflects a residual pre-Vedic tribal animism which was absorbed into the Aryan mainstream. Cowherd Krishna, irrepressibly irreverent about the property rights of big landlordism, is the subaltern god supreme, a fully paid-up S/T and a proto-Naxal to boot. Genetics might also have something to say about the dominance of the dark. Genetically speaking, dark pigmentation of eyes, or skin or hair is said to be more assertive or 'dominant' than lighter tones. This hypothesis — for it's not a proven fact — has in turn given birth to the persistent urban legend that blondes are doomed to extinction. The ultimate demise of the blonde — a favoured tidbit of western media — has been predicted for at least the past 150 years, as reported by Michael Crichton, in his book, Next. A typical requiem for the blonde dates back to 1906, when a certain Major C E Woodruff, addressing the Association for the Advancement of Science at Columbia University, predicted that blondes would be phased out of the assembly line of evolution in 600 years. More recently, says Crichton, the BBC cited a German study by ‘experts' to announce that blondes, along with the MCIR gene for blondness, would die out by 2202, the last blonde probably being born in Finland, the country with the largest per-centage of blondes. Why has this bad 'blonde joke' persisted for so long, though it has no basis in fact whatsoever? One answer could be that it appeals to the practitioners of the pseudoscience of pop genetics. According to one theory, natural blondes were initially favoured in terms of reproductive success because their pale colouration was believed to be a token of fertility, thus enabling them to attract more, and more powerful, mates ('Gentlemen prefer blondes'). However, the natural blonde's advantage was supposedly terminally undermined by the emergence of the peroxide blonde, whose fair hair was an attribute not of genes but of a bottle of chemicals. These fake blondes took away many of the suitors of natural blondes whose chances of genetic replication were thereby correspondingly reduced (a fake blonde/dark-haired pairing won't produce blonde offspring). Perhaps there might be lessons for Hillary Clinton to learn from such myths, ancient and modern, in order to avoid extinction politically, though not as a blonde. To counter the force of Obama's 'dark' appeal, maybe it's still not too late for her to get a quick hair job done. After all, easily the most influential and charismatic woman in America today is a genuine brunette: Oprah Winfrey.
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#1. To: Tauzero (#0)
"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams (1722-1803)‡
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