Indian foreign minister suggests ousting of Oxford student union president was due to racism

Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told MPs he would be willing to take up the issue with Britain

Credit: Indian Government/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Oxford University’s student union has become embroiled in a diplomatic row after India’s foreign minister suggested that the recent ousting of its president was due to racism.

Rashmi Samant, a graduate student reading for an MSc in energy systems at Linacre College, was elected to the role in February after winning 65 per cent of the vote.

She was due to take up the position at the end of the summer term and had promised to "tackle institutional homophobia and transphobia" and "decolonise the curriculum" but resigned days after being elected after a series of Colleges passed motions of no confidence following a backlash over "racist" comments she made on social media.

Oxford International Society said at the time that "for a candidate who campaigned for inclusivity, it is crushing to understand this was insincere in nature", citing her "anti-Semitic, transphobic and racist social media posts".

Ms Samant was also criticised for an Instagram post from 2019 of a photograph taken in Malaysia with the caption "Ching Chang". She defended the post against accusations that it was "sinophobic", saying it was a reference to a joke with a friend about her vegetarianism.

During a hustings event hosted by the student publication Oxford Blue last week, she compared Cecil Rhodes to Hitler, saying "nobody erected Hitler statues".

Speaking about her desire to "decolonise" Oxford, she said to students: "I just want to ask you one question. If an organisation would come up to you and give you a heap of money to set up a scholarship and say ‘I want to name this the Hitler fund or the Hitler scholarship’, would you do it?"

Oxford’s Jewish Society said it was "extremely concerned" by her social media posts, including a caption of a photo of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial which showed "severe insensitivity and ignorance" as well as her comparison between Rhodes, a British imperialist, and Hitler.

Now the case has caught the attention of Indian MPs and members of Narendra Modi’s ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

On Monday, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, the foreign minister, told MPs he would be willing to take up the issue with Britain. "As the land of Mahatma Gandhi, we can never ever turn our eyes away from racism, wherever it is, particularly so when it is in a country where we have such a large diaspora," he said.

"We have strong ties with the UK. We will take up such matters with great candour when required."

Ashwini Vaishnaw, a member of the BJP, described Samant’s treatment as a "continuation of attitudes and prejudices from the colonial areas, especially in the UK". He said Ms Sumant was "cyberbullied" into resignation, adding: "If this happens at an institute like Oxford, what is the kind of message that goes out to the world?"

The intervention of India’s foreign minister came after Ms Sumant returned to her family in Udupi, a city in the south-west Indian state of Karnataka, and told The Indian Express that she was the victim of a "cancel culture mob".

She said: "There was a conscious attempt made to unearth posts made by me in the past. These posts were always there, but no one raked up any issue during the election process. It was only after I won that they were brought up. I believe my posts were not malicious or racist. To take offence you have to perceive it in a certain manner."