Kerala Chief Secretary Sarada Muraleedharan Opens Up On Colour And Gender Bias

Thiruvananthapuram: “Black is beautiful. Black is gorgeousness. That I dig black.” This was how Kerala Chief Secretary Sarada Muraleedharan said in an open letter Wednesday when she had to face discrimination due to her skin colour and gender.

In a Facebook post, she recalled a remark comparing her tenure as chief secretary to that of her predecessor and husband, V Venu, stating: “Heard an interesting comment yesterday on my stewardship as chief secretary – that it is as black as my husband’s was white.”

She boldly chose to call out the comment, highlighting the underlying prejudice: “It was about being labelled black (with that quiet subtext of being a woman), as if that were something to be desperately ashamed of.”

Her long post also mentioned about the deep-seated bias against darker skin tones and shared a childhood anecdote — how, as a four-year-old, she once asked her mother to give birth to her again so she could be fair-skinned.

“I have lived for over 50 years buried under that narrative of not being a colour that was good enough. And buying into that narrative. Of not seeing beauty or value in black. Of being fascinated by fair skin. And fair minds, and all that was fair and good and wholesome. And of feeling that I was a lesser person for not being that - which had to be compensated somehow,” she said in her FB post.

She praised her children for helping her unlearn those biases, as they took pride in their skin tone and saw beauty where she once saw none.

Why did I want to call this particular one out? I was hurt, yes. But then these last seven months have been a relentless parade of comparisons with my predecessor, and I have become quite inured.

But why should black be vilified? Black is the all-pervasive truth of the universe. Black is that which can absorb anything, the most powerful pulse of energy known to humankind.