BJP Rajya Sabha member raised the topic of Rashmi Samant....

India "can never ever turn our eyes away from racism", Foreign Minister Dr. S Jaishankar said in parliament today after a BJP leader raised the topic of Rashmi Samant, the Indian student who resigned as the president of the Oxford University's student union last month after controversy over some of her past remarks and references which were branded as "racist" and "insensitive". The minister said India will raise such matters with Britain "when required".

Indian-origin Rashmi Samant was the first Indian woman to be elected as the President of the Oxford University Students Union. A student of MSc energy systems at Oxford University, Samant was forced to resign within five days of her appointment over several of her social media posts which were labelled to be anti-Semitic and racist. Samant feels it is unfair to judge a person on the basis of social media captions, especially when they are from a "non-native English speaking teenager" and was posted "years before the person formed convictions on issues of race".

Aradhana Maurya