Kerala Chief Secretary Sarada Muraleedharan speaks out against 'being labelled black'

Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Chief Secretary Sarada Muraleedharan has spoken out against the colour and gender bias she has faced and how it still persists in society, sparking off a discussion on social media about the issue and support pouring in for her from various quarters.

Muraleedharan has now been receiving a wave of support from various quarter as she narrated the remarks against her pertaining to her skin colour.

The social media post by the senior most serving IAS officer in the state has also triggered a discussion on the discriminations over skin colour still prevailing in the state.

In a Facebook post, Muraleedharan refers to how, since she was a child, she felt like a lesser person for being dark-skinned, till her children helped her see that black was "beautiful".

Muraleedharan, who succeeded her husband, Dr V Venu, for the post of Kerala chief secretary, said that recently her stewardship as chief secretary was compared with that of her husband's by someone who commented that -- "it is as black as my husband’s was white".

Hurt by the comment, Muraleedharan had put up a Facebook post about it but later deleted it because she was "flustered by the flurry of responses".

"I am reposting it because certain well-wishers said that there were things that needed to be discussed. I agree. So here goes, once again," she said in her post, which garnered over 1,000 reactions and has been commented upon and shared hundreds of times.

Leader of Opposition in the Assembly, V D Satheesan, shared her post with the comment -- "Salute dear Sarada Muraleedharan. Every word you have written is heart-touching. It deserves to be discussed. I too had a dark-skinned mother." Muraleedharan, while not naming who made that comment, said that she wanted to call this particular instance out, as she was hurt by it.

She said that in the last seven months, since she replaced her husband as chief secretary, there has been a "relentless parade" of comparisons with her predecessor, and she had become "quite inured" to it.

"It was about being labelled black (with that quiet sub-text of being a woman), as if that were something to be desperately ashamed of. Black is as black does. Not just black the colour, but black the ne’er do good, black the malaise, the cold despotism, the heart of darkness," she said.

She further questioned why black was vilified when it was the "all pervasive truth of the universe".

Black can absorb anything, is the most powerful pulse of energy known to humankind and is a dress colour that works for everyone -- be it office or evening wear, she added.

The chief secretary also shared a childhood memory of her, as a four-year-old, asking her mother whether she could put her back in the womb and bring her out again "all white and pretty".

She said that she has lived for over 50 years buried under the narrative of not being a colour that was good enough and also bought into it by not seeing beauty or value in black and being fascinated by fair skin.

It led to her feeling like a lesser person for not being fair, which had to be compensated somehow, she said in her post. But her children, who "gloried in their black heritage", changed her point of view.

"Till my children. Who gloried in their black heritage. Who kept finding beauty where I noticed none. Who thought that black was awesome. Who helped me see. That black is beautiful. That black is gorgeousness. That I dig black," she said.

(With PTI inputs)