So gora/gori is a punjabi-esque reference to skin tone. Same as kala and kali.
Gora is lighter, kala is darker.
Ali might be more gora, than Abdul. Abdul might be more kala than Hassan.
Sundeep is more gori than Sumita. Payal is the most kali of her family.
It's descriptive, not racial, and has existed long before colonialism in that part of the world. Much in the same way someone might be referenced as a blonde or a brunette in the UK. In our part of the world there is a mixture of skin tones within similar cultures because of multiculturalism and migration within Asia. In the UK, most of the ethnic Britons are generally of a very similar skin tone, so it wouldn't be something used discriptively to define someone else.
Now when the British invaded and occupied South Asia, you lot were mostly a lot paler than the rest of us, so you became the "gora" or the "gori". When our peeps moved over into multicultural Britain, we started casually using gora/gori, kala/kali to describe people of different races, without any discriminatory undertone. Now if the term gora/kala is prefixed or suffixed with something derogatory or offensive - at that point, and only at that point, could it be argued it's used in a racially discriminatory manner.