Indian president-elect of Oxford Union stands down in racism row

Rashmi Samant faced backlash for her pun about Holocaust and captioning a picture of her from Malaysia with words ‘Ching Chang’

File Image: A general view of a sign outside of the University of Oxford Old Road Campus (Getty Images)

Rashmi Samant, the first Indian woman to be elected as the president of the Oxford university student union, quit the post within days, amid widespread criticism of her social media posts that were deemed “racist” and “insensitive”.

Ms Samant, who had positioned herself as the “inclusivity” candidate and campaigned to remove “imperialist” statues from the campus, announced her resignation on Tuesday following criticism over for social media posts from 2017, that were unearthed days after the election.

These included a Holocaust reference on a post during a visit to the Berlin Holocaust memorial and a photo of her visit to Malaysia with the caption “Ching Chang".

The post, where Ms Samant is seen posing at the Berlin Holocaust Memorial, was captioned “The memorial *CASTS* a *HOLLOW* dream of the past atrocities and deeds...”

Ms Samant said that she was young and didn’t know any better.

Samant claimed the phrase “Ching Chang” was Mandarin for “eat the plants.”

“I was trying to make a pun on words and I am a non-native English speaker,” Ms Samant was quoted as saying by the Times of India. She defended her post saying that it meant “eating plants” and that she was not referring to Malaysians. “The picture of me at a Buddhist temple doing ‘namaste’. I am a vegetarian so I found it funny as it was difficult to find vegetarian food there,” she said.

The 22-year-old from Karnataka state in south-west India was also criticised for her transphobic remarks as she wrote, “women, transwomen and men" in one of the posts, thus separating women from transwomen. Oxford LGBTQ+ campaign called for her resignation, while the Oxford Campaign for Racial Awareness and Equality (CRAE) also condemned her actions.

Ms Samant released an open letter of apology after the furore. “Though the recent developments might make it hard for you to believe the sincerity of my apologies, it deeply pained me to note that I have lost the trust that the student community reposed in me with their votes and belief in my manifesto owing to my mistakes,” she said in the letter. 

“Regrettably, I alienated people within our wonderful student community to the extent that they deem me unfit to be the leader they rightfully deserve. I sincerely apologise to every student who has been hurt by my actions or words and seek a chance to gain your trust in me again," she wrote.

However, after the row continued to escalate, Ms Samant stepped down from the position. “In light of the recent events surrounding my election to the Presidency of the Oxford SU, I believe it is best for me to step down from the role. It has been an honour to be your President-elect,” she said in a statement on Facebook on Tuesday.

The Oxford student union sabbatical officers also issued a statement to apologise for the “hurt and discomfort caused by the actions of the president-elect" and said: “Oxford SU has a no-tolerance policy towards discrimination. Racism, transphobia, and anti-Semitism have no place in our organisation."

A by-election will now be held to choose a new student union president.