By Sam Bidwell / The Critic
March 2021. Rashmi Samant was forced to resign just one month into her term as President of the Oxford University Students Union.
Samant cites her Hindu faith as the reason for her dismissal — “it was declared that ‘Oxford students are not ready for a Hindu President’, compelling me to step down from my rightfully elected position.” The Oxford “ecosystem”, according to Samant, “abhors the Hindu Dharma”. Ashwini Vaishnaw, India’s Minister for Railways, attributes her resignation to “a continuation of attitudes and prejudices from the colonial era”. The incident even received dedicated Parliamentary time over in New Delhi. In August 2023, Samant announces that she has authored a book, A Hindu In Oxford, which recounts the events in detail.
A harrowing tale to be sure — a bright, ambitious Hindu girl hounded out of office by her xenophobic peers. Yet scratch below the surface, and Samant’s tall tale doesn’t quite add up.
In fact, Samant was pushed to resign due to distasteful comments made on social media. In one post, she accompanied a picture taken in Malaysia with the caption “ching chang”. In another, she captioned a picture taken at the Berlin Holocaust Memorial with a pun on the Holocaust.
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