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The telegraph
Indian Foreign Minister suggests ouster of Oxford student union president was due to racism
The Oxford University student union has become embroiled in a diplomatic row after India’s foreign minister suggested that its president’s recent ouster was due to racism. Rashmi Samant, a graduate reading student for a master’s degree in energy systems at Linacre College, was elected to the post in February after winning 65% of the vote. She was due to take up her post at the end of the summer term and had promised to “tackle institutional homophobia and transphobia” and “decolonize the curriculum”, but resigned a few days after being in office. elected after a series of colleges passed no-confidence motions following backlash over “racist” comments she made on social media. The Oxford International Society said at the time that “for a candidate who campaigned for inclusiveness, it is overwhelming to understand that this was inherently insincere”, citing her “anti-Semitic, transphobic and racist posts on social networks “. Ms Samant was also criticized for a 2019 Instagram post of a photograph taken in Malaysia with the caption “Ching Chang”. She defended the post against accusations it was “sinophobic”, saying it was a reference to a joke with a friend about her vegetarianism. At an event hosted by student publication Oxford Blue last week, she compared Cecil Rhodes to Hitler, claiming that “no one erected statues of Hitler”. Speaking of her desire to “decolonize” Oxford, she told the students, “I just want to ask you a question. If an organization would come up to you and give you a bunch of money to set up a scholarship and say, “I want to call it the Hitler Fund or the Hitler Scholarship, would you do it?” The Jewish Society of Oxford said it was’ extremely concerned ‘about its social media posts, including a caption of a photo from the Berlin Holocaust Memorial that showed’ severe callousness and ignorance as well as his 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 party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, the Foreign Secretary, told MPs he would be ready to take up the issue with Britain. “As Mahatma Gandhi’s country, we can never look away from racism, anywhere. he happens to be, especially when he’s in a country where we have such a large diaspora, “he said.” We have strong ties to the UK. We will approach these matters very frankly if necessary. “Ashwini Vaishnaw, member of the BJP, described Samant’s treatment as” a continuation of attitudes and prejudices from colonial areas, particularly in the UK. “He said that Ms Sumant had been a “victim of cyberbullying” until she resigned, adding, “If this happens at an institute like Oxford, what kind of message is being conveyed to the world?” The intervention of the Indian Minister of Affairs foreigners intervened after Ms Sumant returned to her family in Udupi, a town in southwestern India’s Karnataka state, and told the Indian Express that she was the victim of a “quashed culture mob.” She said: “There was a conscious attempt to unearth positions that I had created in the past. Those positions were still there, but no one raised a problem during the electoral process. It is not. only after winning that they were brought up. J I don’t think my posts were malicious or racist. To be offended, you have to perceive them in a certain way. “
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