The makers of 'Khaali Peeli' have tweaked the track 'Beyonce sharma jayegi' after it was criticised for having racist undertones.

Earlier both the director of Bollywood film, Khaali Peeli and lyricist for the song ‘Beyoncé Sharma Jayegi’ said the song was not racist.

Kumaar and Raj Shekhar’s specific lyric, “Tujhe dekh ke goriya, Beyoncé sharma jayegi,” which translates to “After seeing you fair-skinned girl, Beyoncé would be embarrassed,” was the major point of contention.

The makers have now changed the line to "tera dekh ke nakhra duniya sharma jayegi."

Director Maqbool Khan said: "First, without any hesitation or excuses we want to apologise to anyone offended. We assure you that the lyric in question was never intended racially.

”In fact, the term 'goriya' has been so often and traditionally used in Indian songs to address a girl, that it didn't occur to any of us to interpret it in the literal manner.”

Kumaar also defended the choice of word and said: “‘Goriya' as a word has been used in many Hindi songs earlier. Our idea was to simply use a synonym for the word ‘girl’.

“There is no derogation intended - we revere the beauty of global celebrity Beyoncé and don’t mean to hurt any of her fans,” he added. Sung by Nakash Aziz and Neeti Mohan, the music video for the song which features the film’s lead actors, Ishaan Khatter and Ananya Panday, already has 11 million views but only 91,000 likes compared to 882,000 dislikes.

An inside source revealed that since Beyoncé has trademarked her own name as well as her daughter Blue Ivy’s, the makers of the song could face legal action since they have not sought permission to use it.

The team added: “With the dance number being called out for racism, it will be an unwise move to take on an international star like Beyoncé, especially at a time when the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has set the stage for equality.”

Many Indian celebrities came out in support of the Black Live Matters movement in June, including Vishal Dadlani, one half of Indian music duo Vishal-Shekhar who composed the song.

Social media users accused other celebrities such as Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Disha Patani of being ‘hypocrites’ for supporting the movement but not speaking out about discrimination in India and continuing to endorse fairness creams.

India’s most famous one, ‘Fair & Lovely’ was also rebranded to ‘Glow & Lovely’ by Hindustan Unilever in June which many considered a positive move towards ending colourism in the country.

Johnson & Johnson had also previously announced that it would discontinue its ‘Clean & Clear Fairness’ line in India and Neutrogena’s ‘Fine Fairness’ line available in other parts of Asia and the Middle East.

Users were also quick to point out that Beyoncé was recently lauded for the music video of her song, ‘Brown Skin Girl,’ which represented brown women from across national and cultural barriers including South Asian women.

Meanwhile, other users considered it disrespectful to draw a comparison between Beyoncé and Ananya Panday who many consider to be a weak actress who has benefitted from nepotism through her father, Chunky Panday.

People with dark skin, particularly women, have been historically stigmatised and discriminated against in India with ‘fair skin’ considered to be a marker of beauty.

This has roots in the caste system whereby lighter-skinned people were considered to be from ‘higher castes’ because they were less likely to be exposed to the sun through manual labour than those from ‘lower castes.’ Recently, there has been some progression towards less colourism in India recently with songs like Honey Singh’s ‘Brown Rang’ which celebrate brown women and popular matrimonial site, shaadi.com removing it's ‘fair filter.’ However, Bollywood has consistently perpetuated the racism and colourism entrenched into society and and Beyoncé Sharma Jayegi seems to be the latest example of this.