We must fight our collective prejudices

The news on the social media trolling of the incumbent Kerala chief secretary Ms Sarada Muraleedharan is quite disturbing. It reeks of misogyny, body shaming and even racism. That someone at her position should have to face such contempt for her complexion, demonstrates how deep our prejudice is. An old school bureaucrat who stays away from limelight and is known for her work in unglamorous fields like rural development, women’s empowerment and poverty eradication, she is far from social media posturing. This makes such comments even worse. Her response though has been gracious, she tells us about her early awareness about the color discrimination and how she wanted to be freed of her complexion but has since found strength in it It is perfectly acceptable that people may criticize her for her work as a bureaucratic but using her complexion for innuendo is not acceptable. The privileges of color, sex or caste are far more accepted than those of authority and education, this might be because the latter are achievable for the people but the former are not achievable by efforts and are absolutes. Ableism is also a similar trait. Conformity of body to physical and beauty standards or the lack of it forms a plane of discrimination. While better awareness of the impact such discrimination has on its victims may help the real challenge is building the idea of justice within our collective consciousness. That we owe each other justice, and justice is non discrimination.