Admin | On 28, May 2019

Upper-caste colleagues harassed tribal Muslim Dr. Payal Tadvi over background

MUMBAI, India: May 28, 2019 — The suicide of a young medical student at Nair Hospital Mumbai is prompting protests and calls for arrest of several of her upper-caste colleagues after she succumbed to months of harassment over her background.

“She told me that she was being mentally tortured,” says Abeda Tadvi, mother of the late Dr. Payal Tadvi. A gynecologist in her mid-20s, Payal was found hanging from the ceiling of her hostel on May 22.

“She was picked on for being lower caste,” says her husband, Dr. Salman Tadvi. He and others are interpreting her suicide as a murder by her colleagues. Her death occurred the day before India announced that the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party had won the country’s General Election.

Payal with her husband Salman

Payal was a Muslim from the Bhil community, an Adivasi (or tribal) group listed as indigenous to the state of Maharashtra. She had confided in her mother about months of routine harassment by three of her upper-caste colleagues. As reported by thewire.in, “They allegedly went to the toilet and then wiped their feet on her bed, called her casteist slurs, made fun of her for being a tribal on WhatsApp groups, and threatened to not allow her to enter operation theaters or perform deliveries.”

The harassment apparently escalated in May before culminating in Payal’s death.

“On May 10, my daughter called me,” says Abeda. “She was crying and told me about the harassment she had been facing. I was rattled and wrote a complaint the same night. On May 13, I went to the dean to hand over the letter but we were not allowed to go in.”

On May 21, her mother says Payal attended a dinner, after which her colleagues mocked her for “wasting time.” Referencing India’s reservation system (which provides affirmative action to historically marginalized communities), the colleagues accused Payal of getting “admission on tribal quota.” Her husband says she was crying inconsolably throughout the next morning. “Eyewitnesses informed me that the accused trio kept taunting and harassing her about going out for dinner the previous night,” he adds.

On May 26, police filed charges against the three upper-caste colleagues: Dr. Ankita Khandelwal, Dr. Hema Ahuja, and Dr. Bhakti Mehar. Charges include abetting suicide as well as violating the 1989 Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Prevention of Atrocities Act. Along with Dr Yi Ching Ling, head of the hospital’s Gynecology Department, their licenses have been suspended. Mehar was arrested on May 28, but the others are reportedly absconding.

“This tragedy demonstrates how systematic institutional murder hangs the marginalized,” says Arvin Valmuci, spokesperson of U.S.-based Organization for Minorities of India (OFMI). “It’s a horrifying reminder that, in 21st-century India, caste still pervades every field and social status. Even upward mobility and improvements in economic conditions have not served to annihilate the caste system and the atrocities that accompany its practice.”

Pieter Friedrich, an analyst of South Asian affairs, says the incident reminds him of similar caste-motivated suicides in recent years. “We saw Rohith Vemula and Muthukrishnan Jeevanantham both take their own lives in the same manner as Dr. Payal Tadvi,” says Friedrich. “The instigating factors behind their deaths are so similar that these suicides are more appropriately defined as institutional murders. All three felt targeted, discriminated against, and denied equal footing within their institutions because of their backgrounds.”

Vemula died on January 17, 2016. His death occurred just nine days before India’s Republic Day, which commemorates adoption of the constitution attributed to Dalit civil rights champion Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. A PhD student at the University of Hyderabad, Vemula was an active member of the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA). He was suspended after joining other ASA students in protesting against a Hindu nationalist event.

“The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility,” mourned Vemula in his suicide note. “To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of stardust. In very field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living.”

Rohith’s death prompted international protests, including one by OFMI and other groups held outside the San Francisco, CA Indian Consulate on January 22, 2016. In India, protestors included Vemula’s close friend, Muthukrishnan, a research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Shortly after Vemula’s death, he wrote: “They are going to kill many Rohiths, like us, just for eating beef, for being rational, for being intellectually productive for the country. But we are the real sons of this land and after we are all killed, there will be no nation.”

On March 13, 2017, Muthukrishnan also took his own life. “There is no equality,” he wrote on Facebook just two days before he died. He alleged that the university was “denying the education of the Marginals.”

“Payal’s death means that yet another mother has lost her child as the Brahmanical structure of India keeps a stranglehold on the futures of the Mulnivasi Bahujan,” says Bhajan Singh, Founding Director of OFMI. “India will continue this institutional murder of its sons and daughters until caste is annihilated. For now, we weep over the blood of the innocent as India’s version of Aryanism, which is known as Brahmanism, continues to spread its tentacles of supremacy.”

Asked to comment on the status of the caste system under Indian law, Friedrich remarks, “The practice of caste remains legal within the independent Republic of India. The practice of untouchability has been outlawed by a constitutional provision. Caste discrimination is also constitutionally prohibited. However, these issues of discrimination and of treating people as untouchable are really just the trickle-down effects — the natural result — of practicing caste. Any sincere effort to combat these problems, or the kind of harassment that Dr. Tadvi endured, must include a constitutional provision criminalizing the very practice of caste itself.”

Meanwhile, outcry is mounting over Payal’s death. On May 28, her parents and husband were joined by hundreds of protestors outside Nair Hospital Mumbai. Dalit and tribal organizations participating in the protest included members of Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi, a political party founded by Dr. Ambedkar’s grandson. Chandrashekhar Azad, chief of Bhim Army (a Dalit activist group), said he may travel from Uttar Pradesh to Maharashtra, declaring, “We need to fight for justice for our younger sister.”