Kerala Chief Secretary Sarada Muraleedharan has ignited a powerful social media debate by calling out persistent colour and gender biases, reflecting on a lifetime of feeling diminished for her dark skin and a recent barb likening her tenure to her husband’s.
In a candid Facebook post on Tuesday, March 25, she recounted a comment that stung: “Heard an interesting comment yesterday on my stewardship as chief secretary—that it is as black as my husband’s was white.” The remark, contrasting her leadership with that of her predecessor and spouse, Dr. V Venu, spurred her to address deep-seated prejudice head-on.
Muraleedharan, who assumed the chief secretary role in August 2024, initially shared her hurt online but deleted the post, rattled by the flood of reactions. Encouraged by well-wishers, she reposted it, writing, “I am reposting it because certain well-wishers said that there were things that needed to be discussed. I agree.”
The post, amassing over 1,000 reactions and hundreds of shares, struck a chord. Opposition Leader V.D. Satheesan saluted her courage, noting, “Every word you have written is heart-touching,” and connecting it to his own dark-skinned mother.
The chief secretary didn’t name the critic but highlighted the sting of being “labelled black (with that quiet sub-text of being a woman), as if that were something to be desperately ashamed of.” She challenged the vilification of black—linked in the remark to “malaise” and “despotism”—celebrating its universal power and beauty.
“Black can absorb anything… it’s the most powerful pulse of energy known to humankind,” she wrote, recalling a childhood plea at four to her mother to be reborn “all white and pretty.” That longing, she admitted, shadowed her for over 50 years, until her children’s pride in their “black heritage” reframed her view: “Black is beautiful. That I dig black.”
Her seven-month tenure has faced relentless comparisons to Venu’s, a burden she’d grown “quite inured” to—until this. Now, her defiance has rallied support, spotlighting colourism and sexism in a society still wrestling with such biases, even as she helms Kerala’s bureaucracy with grit and grace.