Hi, my name is Kalyani Joshi and I’m 22 years old. As someone absolutely influenced by the mainstream cinema since a very young age, celebrating beautiful stories and songs, in awe of all the actors and actresses that were playing a character which wasn’t actually themselves, fascinated me to such an extent that I wanted to be able to do that and acting became my dream job. However over the years I realised, that people frowned upon me whenever I told them about my aspirations of becoming an actor and it was because nobody thought that a person that looked like me would be entertained into the field of cinema, they would often laugh or express concern about my unreal dreams without even bothering to give importance to any of my skills or talent. 

Why didn’t it matter if I was a good actor or not? Why was it that the only thing that mattered was that I had a different skin color? Whenever I looked around I saw so many people that looked like me or had a similar skin color as mine but when I looked at the screen, there were none.

Everyone just looked like different versions of the same person. I often wondered, was the film world actually from a different world? Tall, fair, straight hair, sharp featured individuals. None of which actually seemed like me. All this only led my self esteem to drop to a huge extent. It made me feel ugly, unworthy and unimportant for a large part of my life which no matter what cannot be reversed.

I felt as if people like me weren’t normal, it took a huge toll on my mental health and scars of which still remain and will continue to, somewhere at the back of my mind. It was only now when I decided to stand up for myself and my dreams and not let these difficult and rigid traditions of the society stop me in any manner.

I was successful in unlearning and educating myself in the right direction but not the same happens with everyone. And so as a responsibility, I do not want this to happen with other young kids who do not see themselves represented on screen.I do not want to let their self esteem and worth be crumbled because of the inaccurate norms created by the infinite influence of films over so many years. 

Despite 70% of the population in India being dark skinned, we hardly see any such individual in prominent roles. Same goes for fat people and people with different heights, shapes and sizes. Instead we see blatant and ignorant dialogues being made in the films that make fun of and insult people with specific appearances other than the conventional ones. These are all normal people with a regular life with the same problems and stories that are written for the stereotypically conventional and so called acceptable characters in movies. “Yeh amaavas ka chaand poornima k saath kya kar raha hain?”, “yeh itni moti hain ki weighing scale pe khadi rahegi toh ‘to be continued’ dikhaega”, “goriya, gora gora mukhda “ “patli kamariya” and similar words used in so many songs as compliments hinting their supremacy over any other skin coloured/ different body typed individual. Same goes for issues of gender parity in films and misogynistic representation of women, hearing and seeing all of this via a platform that could actually be used as such a helpful tool, makes me feel so uncomfortable, furious and hurt all at the same time.

Equality and dignity are basic human rights which are clearly violated in most of these films where such discriminatory and demeaning comments are brushed off under the name of jokes.

With change happening in the west and movies with discriminatory stereotypes being remade like introduction of female superheroes, increasing representation of people of color, involvement of gender experts to ensure parity in series and films, it would only be a wise thing to learn from all of this and take responsibility & accountability as public persons so that we ourselves become an example of inclusivity, respect and equality to the world.

      Through this petition I want the central board of film certification to,

1. establish a guideline for inclusion and representation of diverse characters in prominent roles in at least 50% of the films including mainstream cinema made every year without demeaning them for their appearances.

2. Make sure the guideline is implemented with complete content and accuracy.

      At the same time,I would also like to applaud the very little percentage of film-makers and production houses that have actually tried and made a few films with a diverse cast which honestly acted as one of the big hopes for me to start this petition as it made me believe that there are indeed a few people that want to stand by this change in support of inclusivity and increased representation of people with diverse appearances in 2020