Kerala chief secretary Sarada Muraleedharan has spoken out about the colour and gender discrimination she has faced and its continued presence in society, triggering a debate on social media with many people showing their support.

An acquaintance had compared Sarada’s work with that of her husband and predecessor V. Venu by saying “it is as black as her husband’s was white”. Sarada did not reveal whether the discrimination came from a colleague.

Hurt by the comment, Sarada had put up a Facebook post about it but later deleted it because she was “flustered by the flurry of responses”.

“I am reposting it because certain well-wishers said that there were things that needed to be discussed. I agree. So here goes, once again,” she said in her post, which garnered over 1,000 reactions and has been commented upon and shared hundreds of times.

In the Facebook post on Tuesday night, Sarada also wrote about how she grew up feeling like she was worthless because of her dark skin. It was only later, with her children’s help, that she realised black is “beautiful”.

She said that society needed to change its attitudes and overcome these biases. According to her, this change must begin at home and in schools. She said the comparison with her husband was “unexpected” and it was Venu who had encouraged her to repost her social media note. “He is the one who gave me the courage to do so,” she said.

She also felt that the comparison not only referred to her dark complexion but carried a “value connotation” about the current governance being “black”. “Therefore, I thought that we need to ‘call it out’,” she told aTV channel.

“Those who have not faced such bias think it is a small issue. But it is a big deal for those who have faced it. It is something which has questioned their identity and worthiness,” Sarada said.

She shared a memory of her, as a four-year-old, asking her mother whether she could put her back in the womb and bring her out again “all white and pretty”. Now, her solution to the issue is to “turn it on its head” and to say: “Yes I am black. Black is seven times beautiful.”