The UGC submitted the new draft to the Supreme Court last month in a six-year-old petition filed by Radhika Vemula and Abeda Tadvi. In the petition, the two mothers, after losing their children, sought accountability and the establishment of adequate mechanisms by the UGC to address caste-based discrimination in university spaces.

The UGC, unprompted by the court or the petitioners, has submitted the Equity Regulations Draft, which undoes some of the crucial clauses from the 2012 regulations. The petitioners had moved the court to highlight the ineffectiveness and lack of government will to put its act together. Instead of addressing these issues, the UGC has further diluted the existing regulations.

‘New regulations will make redressal more difficult’

Vemula and Tadvi argue that the newly submitted draft regulations will make redressal more difficult, as the UGC has decided to group all forms of discrimination – including those based on gender, disabilities, religion and caste – under a single umbrella. In contrast, the 2012 Equity Regulations primarily focused on caste-based discrimination. Existing mechanisms already address other forms of discrimination, and expanding the scope of the Equity Regulations will only lead to more chaos in the dispensation of justice, the petitioners assert.

The petitioners, represented by lawyers Indira Jaisingh and Disha Wadekar, have pointed out the lack of adequate mechanisms to address the growing number of discrimination cases and suicides on campuses. They argue that the UGC’s proposal to dilute the existing regulations on caste discrimination and introduce other forms of discrimination will not only hamper the redressal of caste-based discrimination but also “risk undermining the effectiveness of current regulations related to gender and persons with disabilities (PwDs).”

In addition to filing an affidavit in the Supreme Court in response to the UGC’s draft regulations, the petitioners have submitted detailed suggestions to the UGC, comparing the 2012 regulations with the proposed ones. They have identified gaps and provided effective suggestions to the higher education governing statutory body.

One crucial suggestion is the need for a clear definition of what constitutes caste-based discrimination in higher education. Wadekar notes that the draft regulation fails to specify what constitutes caste-based discrimination. “Discriminatory practices in university spaces often get normalised, and without a clear definition, universities may exercise their discretionary powers and, more often than not, attempt to shirk responsibilities,” Wadekar said. Her observation is based on past data showing how universities have denied the existence of caste-based discrimination on campuses.

In the past decade, as caste-based discrimination and suicides rose, the UGC was compelled to notify the UGC (Promotion of Equity in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations 2012, also known as the Equity Regulations. These regulations required all colleges and universities to establish an Equal Opportunity Cell to oversee the promotion of equality and appoint an anti-discrimination officer to investigate complaints regarding discrimination in violation of equity. However, the regulations were not fully implemented as intended.

The proposed regulations, besides lacking clear definitions of discrimination, also exclude the Other Backward Classes (OBC) community from their scope, applying only to students from the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST). In 2012 regulations too, students from OBC communities were excluded. The petitioners argue that this will be unjust to OBC students, who are equally vulnerable to discrimination on campuses. Data shows that many students from the OBC community have resorted to suicide or dropped out of colleges because of caste-based discrimination in the past decade.

The proposed regulations do not include staff or faculty members. Wadekar argues that the suggestion to include staff members comes from numerous anecdotal instances where faculty members have reported discriminatory practices based on their caste identities.

The 2012 regulations lacked a monitoring mechanism to ensure that the equity measures were effectively implemented. Vemula and Tadvi have suggested that the UGC should expressly mandate that “all Universities and Colleges submit periodic reports to UGC on the working of the Equity Regulations.”

While the proposed regulation has several problems, it also contains some concrete measures, such as the registration of FIRs once a case under penal laws is established. To this, the petitioners have suggested that “the heads of institutions should be mandated to register FIRs within 24 hours for complaints where a case is made out under penal laws.”

2012 regulations’ failure

In January 2016, Rohith Vemula, a PhD scholar at the University of Hyderabad (UoH), along with five other Dalit students, was expelled from the university housing facility for an alleged attack on an ABVP member. As the expelled students intensified their protest against the university administration’s decision, a few days into the protest, on January 17, 2016, Rohith died by suicide. UoH Vice-Chancellor Appa Rao Podile, then BJP MLC N. Ramachandra Rao, and two ABVP members (Susheel Kumar and Rama Krishna) were accused of abetting Rohith’s suicide. An FIR was filed against them, but the police failed to take any action.

In Dr. Payal Tadvi’s case, her suicide notes and her mother Abeda Tadvi’s testimony ensured that her three harassers – senior doctors Hema Ahuja, Bhakti Mehare, and Ankita Khandelwal – were immediately arrested. A damning 1,200-page chargesheet was filed against them. They have been accused of torturing Payal for an entire year and hurling casteist slurs at her. The Tadvis belong to the Bhil (of the Tadvi sub-caste) tribal community, and Payal was perhaps the first woman from her community to become a doctor. Advocate Wadekar is representing Abeda Tadvi in the criminal proceedings as well.

If the 2012 regulation had worked effectively, both Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi would not have needed to take drastic steps. The existing regulation has made it difficult for students to report instances of discrimination. Most of these cases are known because of individual efforts undertaken by anti-caste activists or organisations, which have, from time to time, highlighted extreme cases of discrimination on Indian university campuses.

Besides Rohith and Payal’s deaths, numerous other suicides have occurred in Indian universities over the past two decades. While some of these deaths were covered by the media, many were documented in an independent study conducted by a Delhi-based organisation called the Insight Foundation, headed by educationist Anoop Kumar.

But instead of focusing on these cases and encouraging students to come forward and report incidents of discrimination, the draft regulations mention “false complaints.” Wadekar says the draft doesn’t differentiate between a false complaint and a mere inability to substantiate a complaint with adequate evidence. “This clause,” Wadekar said, “should be completely removed.” “Students already find it hard to approach the Equity Committee, and such clauses will only act as a deterrent,” she added.

UGC’s hasty actions

This is not the first time that the UGC has acted hastily in response to the petition. In 2024, the UGC had set up a nine-member committee to look into the concerns highlighted in the petition. The Wire, in February last year, had looked into the composition of the committee and highlighted the chequered past of several of its members, including allegations of caste discrimination levelled against them.

Even as the division bench of Justice Surya Kant and N. Kotiswar Singh of the Supreme Court have been hearing this petition, another petition, Amit Kumar and Others versus Union of India, highlighting identical issues, is being heard before Justices J.B. Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan. On March 24, in a significant order, the apex court directed the formation of a National Task Force to address the mental health concerns of students and prevent the rising number of suicides in higher educational institutions (HEIs). This National Task Force is being constituted as a ten-member committee, with retired Supreme Court judge S. Ravindra Bhat as its chairperson. Other members include mental health experts, teaching professionals, among others. This order too refers to the ongoing petition filed by Vemula and Tadvi.

Courtesy: The Wire

The post ‘Diluted Existing Rules’: Rohith Vemula, Payal Tadvi’s Mothers Slam UGC’s Draft Equity Regulations appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The Mumbai police, which investigated the case, found a three-page ‘suicide note’ in which Tadvi had, in detail, described her ordeal and the failure of the medical institution T.N. Topiwala National College and B.Y.L. Nair Hospital, to stop the brutalities inflicted upon her and several other Dalit and Adivasi students.

In the suicide note, Tadvi named Bhakti Mehare, Ankita Khandelwal, and Hema Ahuja – her seniors at the gynaecology department in the medical school. She said they had harassed and humiliated her over her tribal identity. She also named Yi Ching Ling, the then-unit head of the gynaecology department at T.N. Topiwala National College and B.Y.L. Nair Hospital – where Tadvi was studying in 2019 – for not taking her complaint seriously.

A week ago, the special court hearing the case in Mumbai allowed the special public prosecutor Pradeep Gharat’s application to add Yi as an accused in the case. Special Judge S.M. Tapkire, on February 28, issued summons to Yi and ordered:

“The impleaded/added accused Dr. Yi Ling Chung Chiang be tried together with the trio of charge-sheeted accused.”

The court directed that summons be issued to her and instructed the investigating officer to submit a report by the next date, March 20.

The court’s order came after the public prosecutor moved an application seeking criminal charges against Yi, who according to Tadvi (through her suicide letter) and her family had ignored a serious complaint of harassment. One might imagine that the state government was in agreement with this move. But on March 7, a notification was issued and Gharat was suddenly replaced with another senior public prosecutor. No explanation was given.

This opens the matter up to the speculation that the state government did not want Yi’s name added to the case, and Gharat was replaced because he did not seek the state government’s approval on this move.

Gharat, however, says such permission was not needed in the first place. “Once you are appointed as an officer of the court, it is your responsibility to decide the course of the trial. My application was based on the anti-ragging committee’s report and also the family’s position from the start,” Gharat says.

This is not the first case in which Gharat has been removed. Prior to this, he was suddenly shifted out of other cases involving BJP leaders like Nitish Rane, Narayan Rane, Navneet Rana, and Mohit Kamboj. “I had moved applications and sought strict actions in these cases too. It wasn’t surprising that I was removed from these cases when the Mahayuti government came into power,” Gharat says.

He expresses concern about the decision to remove him from Tadvi’s hearing. “The community (Bhil Tadvi tribe) to which Payal belonged rarely sees a woman reach higher education. She was a role model for many other children like her, but the system killed her,” he says.

Although Gharat was appointed as a special public prosecutor in the case by the state government, his name for the post was suggested by the Tadvi family and their lawyer. As per the rules under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, it is mandatory for the states to let the victim’s family have a say on the choice of the prosecutor. The Maharashtra state government too has issued a notification in 2016 allowing the victim and their family to have a say in the appointment of the public prosecutor. Tadvi’s mother, Abeda, had written a letter to the then tribal development minister Kagda Chandya Padvi (under the Mahavikas Aghadi government) requesting Gharat’s appointment.

Advocate Disha Wadekar, who is representing the family in the higher courts, says that the practice of the victim’s family choosing a lawyer in atrocity cases is very common and has helped prove atrocities in many cases. And in cases where the families have not been able to get their own lawyer, the cases have barely made any progress – “like, for instance, the institutional murder of Rohit Vemula at Hyderabad Central University,” Wadekar says.

Wadekar, along with another lawyer, Nihalsing Rathod, was appointed by the Rajasthan government to represent the state in the rape and subsequent suicide of a 17-year-old student. This appointment, Wadekar notes, also occurred through the family’s request. “Getting a perfectly qualified lawyer removed from the case would disrupt the trial,” Wadekar says.

With: Abeda Tadvi, a cancer survivor who has doggedly followed the case from the start and taken it up to the Supreme Court, has now written to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis demanding that Gharat be reappointed. “Advocate Gharat has been handling the case for 3-4 years now and has closely studied it. With him as the public prosecutor, we are hopeful that justice will be done… I request you to bring Advocate Gharat back into the case and allow him to handle it until justice is served,” Abeda Tadvi has written in the letter.

Courtesy: The Wire

The post Payal Tadvi’s Case: Maharashtra Govt Replaces Prosecutor Who Moved to Add HoD to Chargesheet appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Lately committing of suicide in higher places of learning has been in the news more often than before. Most of the victims belong to the dalits, Adivaisis in particular, while few others have also done so due to academic pressures. In case of Rohith Vemula, it was a case of caste discrimination and his activities as a Rohith was labeled as anti-national. Two other cases which stand out are that of Payal Tadvi, an aspiring gynecologist, and Fathima Lathif, who was pursuing her post graduation in IIT Madras. Tadvi was a Bhil Muslim, wife of Dr. Salman Tadvi, and she was harassed by her seniors, in day to day life. Fathima was a bright young student who was topping in most of the examinations and after joining IITM, she met with the stone wall of prejudice, where despite her caliber she was given poor score in ‘internal evaluation’. She named one of her teachers for denigrating her and wrote to her father “Dad, my name itself is a problem’.

While other types of humiliations have abounded based on caste, being a tribal or being transgender, these two cases of Payal and Fathima relate also to be part of subtle and overt dislike-hatred for Muslim community. This phenomenon is not present only in India but globally as it picked up after 9/11, 2001, when US media coined and popularized a phrase “Islamic Terrorism”. Surely terrorism is an all pervasive phenomenon where people from many religions have indulged in it for various reasons. There have been those belonging to Irish Republican Army, Buddhist Monks indulging in such activities in Sri Lanka, there has been LTTE, with Dhanu killing Rajiv Gandhi, but never was religion associated with terrorism till the WTC attack. This attack was most horrid killing nearly three thousand innocent people from across different countries and different religions.

Blame for this was put on Osama bin Laden-Al Qaeda. It is another matter that it was America which helped in bringing up of Al Qaeda, by funding it massively (eight thousand Million dollars and seven Thousand tons of armaments). Scholar Mahmud Mamdani in his book ‘Good Muslim Bad Muslim’, based on CIA documents gives the details of mechanism in which America operated to prop up Al Qaeda, how the syllabus of its indoctrination module was prepared in Washington. Later of course the US policies in the West Asia, policies aimed at controlling the oil wealth of West Asia led to the other dangerous fallouts of Al Qaeda, in the form of ISIS and IS. US Vice-President Hillary Clinton in a blunt statement did concede how Al Qaeda was propped up by US to fight the Russian armies in Afghanistan. She says, “Let’s remember here… the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago

… Let’s go recruit these mujahedeen. “…importing their Wahabi brand of Islam so that we can go beat the Soviet Union.”

The roots of global Islamophobia lie in the American machinations. In India this came as an add on to the prevailing prejudices against Muslims. These prejudices part of ‘social common sense’ does have roots in the British introduced communal historiography, presented in a selective way. While the roots of these anti Muslim perceptions do lie in the British introduced syllabus, the proliferation of this took place through various mechanisms, the roots of which les in communal organizations particularly RSS, while Muslim League made its own contribution by adopting the historiography, which presented Muslims as the rulers. In RSS Shakhas the acts of Muslim kings in destroying Hindu temples and spreading Islam on the point of sword and selective stories of Aurangzeb form the base for indoctrinating young minds. This was supplemented by the chain of Sarswati Shishu Mandirs and many other acts, organizations floated for glorying Hindus and demonizing Muslims.

This demonization got a big boost in the decade of 1980s, when Rath Yatras were taken out to build Ram Temple. What was propagated was that Babar’s general Mir Baqui had destroyed the Ram Temple at the site of Lord Ram’s birth. The good part of the recent Supreme Court Judgment on the Babri Mosque is that as per SC there was a ‘non Islamic structure’ below the mosque. And As per the ASI report, there is no proof that it was a temple or that it was destroyed or that was a place of birth of the Lord Ram.

All this truth coming out is a bit too late in the day as by now the falsehoods spread against Muslims are a core part of understanding of most of the people in the society. So Fathima’s teacher or Payal Tadvi’s seniors are in a way no exception to their subtle signals about dislike for their Muslim students or junior Muslim-Tribal colleague.

The power of media in shaping people’s perceptions is infinite. The acme of the power of media was seen when US went on to attack Vietnam on the pretext that its liberation from colonialism is an attack on free World. Noam Chomsky rightly calls that US media ‘Manufactures consent’ for imperialist ambitions of US. Today while US media is most powerful in spreading the global Islamophobia, in India media during last two decades had caught up tremendously in following not only what US media has been spreading, but also the socially divisive propaganda generated by RSS organizations, which are working strongly from last many decades.

Can Fathima’s and Payal’s be saved from the humiliation, insinuations and the insults to which they are being subjected by their peers? It is quite likely that Payal and Fathima are the tip of the iceberg! Not much has been done to counter the hateful propagations done by the US media impacting global media and by Hindu nationalists’ machinations, here at home. The plight of Muslim community, which has to face the brunt of such prejudices and misconceptions are infinite. Can we raise ourselves to counter the false hoods against weaker sections of society, prevailing all around?  

The post Islamophobia: What’s Common between Payal Tadvi and Fathima Latif appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The post Notice to UGC, Govt on Caste prejudice: SC appeared first on SabrangIndia.

They were granted bail after Special Public Prosecutor Raja Thakre told the court that they had no objection as the chargesheet in the case had already been filed. The trio will have to submit a surety of Rs 2 lakhs and appear before the crime branch every alternate day. They are also forbidden from leaving the city without the trial court’s permission.

Dr Payal Tadvi, who belonged to a Scheduled Tribe (ST), was pursuing postgraduate studies in gynecology at Mumbai’s prestigious BYL Nair Hospital. On May 22, 2019, she allegedly hanged herself in her hostel room after being allegedly driven to suicide due to harassment. According to friends and colleagues, the three senior doctors harassed Tadvi and used casteist slurs while addressing her and even mocked her on Whatsapp groups. Even after repeated complaints, the hospital administration allegedly failed to take action against the perpetrators. The accused allegedly destroyed the suicide note, but images were recovered from Dr Tadvi’s phone.

Her institutional murder sparked protests and the National Commission for women took suo motu cognisance of the case. A 21 member panel comprising members of Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors, college administration, and the police took statements of close to 30 people. These include doctors, professors, the unit in-charge, head of the department, nurses from the operation theatres, lab technician, and her roommates. Police arrested the women and they have been in judicial custody till today.

A trial court had rejected their bail plea on June 24. Now that the accused have secured bail from the high court, the accused have also been forbidden from entering Nair Hospital to prevent them from having the opportunity to tamper with evidence. The court also came down heavily on the prosecution for failing to record statements of six key witnesses including Dr Tadvi’s colleagues such as her roommate Snehal Shinde, and directed them to do so immediately.

The post Dr. Tadvi murder case: Bombay HC grants bail to 3 accused appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The protest demanding ‘Justice for Dr Payal Tadwi’ held at the Thiruvananthapuram Government Medical College on May 31 was led by state general secretary Mahesh Thonnakkal.  Protest gatherings were held at the government medical colleges at Kozhikode, Thrissur and Manjeri on June 3.  The gatherings called to resist the atrocities against Dalits, Muslims and Adivasis in the educational institutions all over the country.  It also urged to frame and enact the Rohit Act, which can safeguard the students of the marginalized sections in the universities in the country.

Dr Payal Tadwi is a martyr of the racism getting strengthened in India, opined Shamseer Ibrahim, state president of the Fraternity Movement, in an article.  The article points towards the ‘cruel indifference on the part of the media in the country even days after the incident’.  While the national media are not bringing out the issue in a pressurizing way, such efforts are seen only from the part of certain social media groups.  ‘Why couldn’t her fellow students and the college authorities consider Payal with equanimity despite having all the academic qualifications and abilities?  Only on finding answer to this question, one can see the dangerous forms of racism in India that are casteism and Islamophobia.  Dr Payal has become the last link in the long list of names such as Rohit Vemula, Mudassir Kamran and Najeeb Ahmed etc,’ he adds in the article.

Courtesy: Two Circles
 

The post Fraternity Movement demands justice for Payal Tadwi appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Reservations have been continued and extended by democratically elected governments. Citizens have a right to criticize any government policy or law. However, no one has a right to humiliate and abuse anyone, and any effort to show these as ‘reactions’ to state policy is pure hypocrisy. These are acts of aggression and violence against people who are vulnerable due to their deprived backgrounds.  
 
Dr Payal Tadvi, an Adivasi Muslim from one of the most backward tribes of India committed suicide on 22 May in her hostel room in a Mumbai hospital. She was a post-graduate resident doctor in the hospital. Before her suicide, her mother and husband gave many written representations to the hospital authorities about the harassment she had been facing from three of her seniors. According to these complaints, her harassers were using casteist abuses and publicly humiliating her. However, the hospital took no administrative actions. After her death the hospital’s anti-ragging committee has reportedly found evidence of harassment, and according to some newspaper reports, the police have found evidence of derogatory casteist remarks.
 
Dr Payal Tadvi’s suicide immediately brings to mind the suicide by Rohith Vemula in 2015, a PhD scholar at the Hyderabad Central University. Rohith was a student activist. His organisation had been protesting against the HCU administration for months before his suicide. Even ministers of the BJP central government had enquired if his organisation had been adequately punished by the university administration after it was involved in a physical brawl with activists of the ABVP, the student organisation allied with the ruling party. If the context of Rohith’s suicide was institutional victimisation of radical Dalit youth, Payal’s suicide throws open a window to the intimate cruelties suffered by the people of deprived backgrounds every day.
 
According to her mother when Payal moved into the hospital hostel, the only cot in the room was already taken by one of her alleged harassers. Her roommate, also a doctor would wipe her feet on the mattress on which Payal slept. Payal was a trained doctor. She had worked in a primary health centre for a year. Yet her modern professional status could not shield her from what she had to go through. She narrated incidences of her humiliation only to her immediate family members. They complained to authorities when they felt she was under serious stress. She died alone, without leaving any suicide note.
 
Even seventy years after independence and a constitution that promises a life of dignity to every citizen, Dalits, Adivasis and minorities in India continue to suffer multiple humiliations in their everyday lives. Appropriate legal provisions are in place. Institutional motivation to implement these provisions is woefully lacking, as shown in Payal’s case. However, even if institutional mechanisms were in place, these can play a role only after a Dalit or an Adivasi has been humiliated, or suffered an assault. Indians need to identify and root out the conditions which make many of them abusers and haters of people from deprived backgrounds.
 
Indian society remains a deeply hierarchical and divided society. Its public sphere, in which people are supposed to be able to interact with each other without distinctions, is also stamped with hierarchy so that there is little respect for a human being for just being a person. The normalcy of this public is dominated by people from privileged backgrounds.
 
People from deprived backgrounds always feel marked in this sphere. Numerous writings by Dalit and Adivasi authors bring it out in painful detail. In educational institutions and work environments, they are permanently stamped with the ‘reservation’ category tag. Most of them are first generation learners from poor families. They get to join these institutions and places of work after numerous hurdles, but their individual talents are little recognised. Increasingly, Muslims in our country are also being made to feel the same way.
 
Institutions of higher learning and government offices reek of a nefarious discourse on ‘merit’ of the ‘general’ category. This ‘merit’ is supposed to be measured by marks in entrance exams. But how does one compare the abilities of a young Dalit woman from a rural landless family, who spent half her time on family chores, went to a dilapidated village school, and still got admission to an institution of higher learning, with another person whose upper-middle-class urban parents gave him/her education in expensive private schools, provided a comfortable learning environment at home, and paid for extra tuitions and coaching? Why should only one of them be considered ‘meritorious’? Why cannot they interact freely in an environment of mutual respect?
 
The policy of reservation in jobs and educational institutions is often cited as the chief culprit, as if without this policy these places will be republics of merit. The drafting committee of India’s constitution under the leadership of Dr Ambedkar adopted reservations as a policy of affirmative action after serious debate. Reservations have been continued and extended by democratically elected governments. Citizens have a right to criticize any government policy or law. However, no one has a right to humiliate and abuse anyone, and any effort to show these as ‘reactions’ to state policy is pure hypocrisy. These are acts of aggression and violence against people who are vulnerable due to their deprived backgrounds.
 
People’s Alliance for Democracy and Secularism (PADS) calls upon the people of India to seriously question why so many of them are haters and abusers of people from deprived backgrounds. Why do people who abuse and commit hate crimes think they can get away with it? It is evident that the anti-caste movements have only partially succeeded in democratising India. The main reason is that the task of making India a democratic society has never been undertaken by the overwhelming majority of Indians. Until this happens India will continue to humiliate and harass people from deprived backgrounds, and destroy bright and sensitive men and women like Rohith and Payal.  
 
Battini Rao is the Convenor of PADS.
 

The post Majority of Indians don’t aspire for a democratic society, often at the cost of minorities appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In yet another kind of institutionalised murder, Dr. Payal Tadvi, a 26 year old Post Graduate Student  at Mumbai’s famed BYL Nair Hospital in the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department of Government run Topiwala National Medical College was driven to suicide after facing  discrimination and harassment at the hands of three of her senior colleagues, Hema Ahuja, Bhakti Mehar and Ankita Khandelwal.

According to AISHE’s (All India Survey of Higher Education)  2018  data there are a  total of 130 female students and 107 male students pursuing M.D (Doctor of Medicine) belonging to the  Scheduled Tribes (ST) category in Maharashtra, which is a total of 3.08% of total students in the state of Maharashtra –  low compared to the reservation mandate.

Overall, within, Maharashtra medical colleges there are no mechanism available to address such issues like caste-based harassment. Educational bodies like the UGC (University  Grants Commision) do have guidelines for creation and maintenance SC/ST Cells and Equal Opportunity cells in colleges. But medical colleges come under the MCI(Medical Council Of India) which does not have any guidelines for cases related to caste based discrimination.

Jalgaon based activist Mr. Moulana Mujaheed Tadvi, President of Adivasi Yuva Kranti Dal and Adivasi Bhil Tadvi Bahuddheshiye Sanstha, said, “ It is the first time that an issue related to a tribal person is been taken seriously and has gained momentum, otherwise many such atrocities against tribals take place everyday but they go unnoticed. We are planning a zilla and tehsil level protest regarding this case. We are also planning a protest March in Mumbai very soon”.

Dr.Payal Tadvi, hailed from Jalgaon district in the North of Maharashtra. Tadvi, belonged to the Bhil Tadvi Community, part of the population of which is Muslim. Dr. Tadvi  was a practising Muslim and had kept her Roza  for  month of Ramadan. The Bhil Muslim Tribal Community and are classified under Scheduled Tribes in states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.According to the 2010 census the Tadvi Bhil population in Maharashtra is 1,818,792.

Regarding the Bhil Tadvi community he further added “The Adivasis like Tadvis have been facing discrimination and atrocities since long time, I have personally toured areas of Bhil, Akola, Amravati, Buldana and the conditions of communities like Bhil and Gonds is pathetic. There is no of employment, many of the tribals have forced out of the forests and hence have lost their livelihood, many of them engage in small time labour work in fields. The education levels are also dismail, the condition especially of the women is very bad”.

Dr. Rewat Kaninde, Ex-President Dr.Ambedkar Medicos Association, currently working in JJ Hospital, Mumbai said that  “ Even during my UG days I too have witnessed verbal discrimination in terms of taunts, even if the students from the reserved category are at the top the class, they are still subjected to taunts from the students and teachers”.

He further added that a mechanism should be put in place to help the students. “We demand that all the medical colleges should compulsory counsel students since many of them come from rural areas, not only the SC/ST, and OBC students but even general students should be counselled. Already in a country like India the doctor patient ratio is one of the lowest in the world. She would have treated lakhs of patients and now she is no more, this is a very serious thing. Every single doctor is important in a country like India and doctor being driven to suicide like this is not acceptable. This a very serious issue. We demand that cells like SC/ST Cells and Equal Opportunity Cells to be set up in Medical Colleges with immediate effect”.

Speaking to TCN a third year female MBBS student from tribal community on condition of anonymity fearing  being targeted  said, “ Many of the tribal students come from areas like Gadchiroli and Nandurbar regions of Maharashtra, for them to cope with the environment of higher education in Mumbai becomes very difficult.  Many of the students come from very backward areas and are from working class  backgrounds. I personally faced lot of problems in my first year, it was very difficult to talk and adapt to the environment. Things are easier for students who come from well-off families. Students from the reserved categories are left to fend for themselves as there is  no emotional support available, I feel giving students the emotional support they require is very important”.

A call for protest was given by the family of Dr.Tadvi. A protest march was held on 28th May in front of BYL Nair Hospital in Mumbai. The three accused under section 306 (abetment for suicide) of the Indian penal code (IPC), sections of the SC/ST Atrocities Act, Anti-Ragging Act and Information Technology Act, 2000. Dr. Tadvi’s body was taken to JJ Hospital for post mortem and was later taken to her hometown of Jalgoan District in Maharashtra. According the recent developments, Dr. Tadvi’s husband has alleged foul play in the suicide case.

Courtesy: Two Circle

The post With no institutional mechanisms, discrimination and harassment are everyday ordeals for tribal students appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The post No Place for Dalits in ‘New India’? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image Courtesy: ANI

The demonstration was led by Dr Tadvi’s mother Abeda and husband Dr Salman. Demanding justice and raising graver questions about the institutional murder of his wife Dr Salman told India Today, “We want the government to intervene. The police are not taking any action. It is possible that Payal was murdered by the three women doctors.”
The protest saw a huge participation from students, especially those who come from Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi backgrounds. Several Adivasi rights organisations were also present at the protest.

Brief background of the case:
On May 22, Dr Payal Tadvi, a 23 year old doctor hailing from a tribal community in Jalgaon allegedly committed suicide at her hostel in Mumbai’s prestigious Nair Hospital after being allegedly harassed by three seniors who would use casteist slurs against her. According to friends and colleagues, three senior doctors harassed Tadvi and used casteist slurs while addressing her and even mocked her on Whatsapp groups. They have been identified as Hema Ahuja, Bhakti Mehar and Ankita Khandelwal. 

Even after repeated complaints, the hospital administration failed to take action against the perpetrators. This makes it a case of institutional murder, not unlike that of Hyderabad University student Rohith Vemula. 

Action taken:
An FIR has been registered against them under sections of the Prevention of Atrocities against SC/ST Act, IT Act, as well as section 306 of the IPC. The Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD) has also suspended the trio’s registration. Gynaecology unit head Dr. Yi Chin Ling has also been suspended.

Even as the protests took place on Tuesday, the BMC followed in the MARD’s footsteps and suspended the licenses of the accused pending an inquiry. The Maharashtra State Commission for Women has also taken suo mostu cognizance of the case and written to the dean of the hospital demanding a report be submitted in eight days detailing anti-ragging measures and communication between the administration and students.

Meanwhile, a 21 member anti-ragging panel has taken statements of nearly 30 people in connection with the case. These include doctors, professors, nurses and other staff. The panel includes representatives from MARD, college administration and the police. Dr. Ramesh BHarmal, dean of the hospital told The Hindu, “Nearly 30 people, including the unit in charge, head of the department, nurses from the operation theatres, lab technician, and her roommates were questioned.”

The post Protest outside Mumbai’s Nair Hospital demanding justice for Dr Payal Tadvi appeared first on SabrangIndia.