Who is Sarada Muraleedharan? Kerala bureaucrat who spoke against skin colour bias with a powerful Facebook post

Sarada Muraleedharan, the IAS officer who is presently posted as Chief Secretary in Kerala, has renewed a debate on skin colour bias after she narrated the ‘discrimination’ that she continues to face.

Muraldheeran took to Facebook and spoke about a comment by someone comparing her work with that of her predecessor, V Venu, saying, “It is as black as my husband’s was white.” Venu, a 1990-batch IAS officer, is also Muraldheeran’s husband.

“Heard an interesting comment yesterday on my stewardship as Chief Secretary – that it is as black as my husband’s was white. Hmmm. I need to own my blackness,” Muraleedharan wrote in her post on 25 March,

Muraleedharan deleted the post after it was “flustered by the flurry of responses”. She reposted it again, though

“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.

Who is Sarala Muraleedharan?

Muraleedharan is a 1990 batch IAS officer. She has been Kerala chief secretary since she took over from her husband Dr V Venu in September 2024.

Muraldheeran headed the Kudumbashree Mission of the Kerala government from 2006 to 2012. The mission focused on empowering women, reducing poverty and emphasising on human rights perspectives.

She has also served as the chief operating officer at the National Rural Livelihoods Mission of the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, till December 2013

She served as the joint secretary in the ministry of Panchayati Raj from 2014 to 2016.

Among other positions, Muraldheeran has also served as Trivandrum’s District Collector, director of Modernising government programme, secretary to government of Kerala cultural affairs and secretary to government of Kerala social welfare.

She has also been director general of the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT).

“Even when you are at the top of the bureaucracy, which has a pecking order which is complied with, there is the question of who gets to speak most, who gets to interrupt and who gets to be heard. If you are not at the top of any such hierarchy, then it becomes extremely difficult,” she told the Indian Express.

How did it start?

In the post on Facebook, Muraleedharan also shared how she grew up feeling like she was worth less because of her dark skin. It was only later, with her children’s help, that she realised black is “beautiful.”

Speaking to a TV channel on March 26, she said that society needs to change its attitudes and overcome these biases. According to her, this change must begin at home and in schools. She said the comparison with her husband was “unexpected” and it was Venu who encouraged to put up her FB post against it again.

“He is the one who gave me the courage to do so,” she said.

She also felt that the comparison not only referred to her dark complexion but carried a “value connotation” about the current governance being “black”. “Therefore, I thought that we need to ‘call it out’,” she told the channel.

While she refused to tell the channel who made the comparative comment, she said the individual has not responded subsequently. She said that she was getting a lot of responses regarding her post, some asking why she was reacting, while some others sharing their similar experiences.

“Those who have not faced such a bias, think it is a small issue. But, it is a big deal for those who have faced it. It is something which has questioned their identity and worthiness,” Muraleedharan said.

Her solution to the issue is to “turn it on its head” and to say — “yes I am black. Black is seven times beautiful.”

She also referred to the support she got from her children and how they helped to change how she saw herself.

“It is a great experience when your children give you the courage to express yourself. Many people have told me. I am happy that our younger generation has persons like these,” she said.

Earlier in the day, 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.”

In her FB post, 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 him, 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 in her post.

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”.

“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.