Malayalam superstar Mammootty has invited trouble for his comments at a promotional event for his latest film Christopher, which was also attended by his co-star Aishwarya Lekshmi. All this started when Aishwarya was asked to comment about Mammootty, she said, “Mammootty is chakara (sweet/jaggery).” Mammootty quickly replied, “She doesn’t call me good white sugar, but black jaggery. Chakara is made from karupatti (palm sugar), you know? Would anyone say that about someone?”
This comment didn’t go down well with netizens, who labelled his statement ‘racist’. Sharing the clip, one Twitter user wrote, “Colourism in our society is so deep-rooted and normalised. In this clip, #Mammootty can be seen casually cracking such colourist jokes. Most of his supporters may think it’s harmless, but something like this shouldn’t be normal, especially coming from someone like Mammootty (Sic).”
“Racism is deeply rooted among the people as well. That’s the reason you rarely find dark-skinned heroes, especially heroines (sic)," commented another user.
This is not the first time the senior actor has courted controversy as recently he apologised for his remarks about filmmaker Jude Anthany. At the launch of Jude’s upcoming film, 2018, Mammootty said, “Jude Anthany is a talented filmmaker with a lot of brain, even though he has no hair on his head.” This ended up irking many, who came out against the superstar on social media.
