It is true that Krishna’s color has mostly been described as dark, and there are reasons for it. The dark color, it seems, is the symbol of his steadiness. It means that he is constantly changing, that changeability is the constant factor represented by varying shades of darkness. This country(India) has some special liking for this color. In fact, white is never as beautiful as dark.
Generally, white skin is considered to be beautiful, because its gloss and glamor can hide many ugly features of the body, but dark skin never hides anything; it clearly shows every feature of the body as it is. That is why beauty is rare among dark-skinned people, while you can find any number of handsome faces among the white-skinned peoples. But whenever there is a really beautiful person with dark skin ke puts even the most beautiful white person into the shade. Beauty in black is superb; it is a rarity. For this reason we have depicted Rama, Krishna and other beautiful people in dark colors. They are rare. It is an ordinary thing to look handsome with white skin; it is very rare with dark.
There are other reasons for our preference for this color. White lacks depth. It is of course expansive. A white face is usually flat; it is rarely deep. But the dark color has a depth and an intensity. Of course, it is not extensive. Have you noticed that wherever a river is deep its water looks dark and beautiful? The beauty of a dark face does not end with the skin; it is not skin deep. It has many layers, layers of transparency. on the other hand a white face is flat; it ends with the skin. That is why when you meet a white person, you begin to feel bored with him after a little while. The dark color is enduring; it does not bore you. It has shade upon shade.
Currently all the glamorous women of the West are mad about suntans, tanning their skin by exposure to the sun. In scores you can see them lying on every beach under the scorching sun so their color gets dark. Why this craze for suntans? The fact is, whenever a culture reaches its peak, expansiveness ceases to have much significance for it, it begins to seek depth and intensity. We tend to think western people are more beautiful, but westerners are finished with appearances, they are now out to seek beauty in depth. Now the beautiful women in the West are trying to get darker and darker. White has the characteristic that many more people appear beautiful than in a dark color, but its beauty lacks depth and transparency; it is flat and dull.
That is why we opted for the dark color. I don’t accept that Krishna was really black; it is not necessary. Really, he was a man of many colors. He was a colorful man. He cannot be presented in a single color; he was really multicolored. The color of his skin cannot be more than one, but his life, of course, has all the colors of the rainbow. And a lot depends on the quality of the eyes with which you see him. In fact, you see him in the color of your own perception. But we saw him in a dark color; we ascribed this color to him. He was such a lovely person that we could not think of his being white. Maybe he was really dark.
Krishna was a multicolored person, and he had such depths of being that we could not conceive of his being a flat color like white. It was a real joy to go on looking into his face and penetrating its beauty and beatitude.
Therefore, although one saw Krishna in many colors, we assigned a single color, a dark color to him. And we called him Shyam, which means dark or deep blue. Krishna means dark too. Not only did we conceive him so, we even named him so. Whether you say Krishna or Shyam or Sawalia, it means the same.
