Payal Tadvi’s Suicide ‘State-Sponsored Crime’ Against Dalits, STs

“Institutional casteism begins the first time a reserved category student enters the college,” said Dr Prachi.

Image used for representational only.

(Photo: The Quint)

Video Editor: Mohd Ibrahim

After caste-based discrimination forced 27-year-old medical student Dr Payal Tadvi to end her life on Tuesday, 28 May, protests were held demanding justice and action against the three doctors accused of harassing her.

Three doctors were arrested for a day after the protests.

Cases of casteism in higher educational institutions in India have been in the news for a while, followed by outrage and protests for a few days. Has anything been done to improve the scenario?

The people from minority communities in higher universities are often ridiculed for taking admissions on reservation seats, Dr Prachi Sambhaji Sharda, who is currently a student at TISS, said.

"Institutional casteism begins the first time a reserved category student enters the college," she said. She added that casteism in universities exist in a more subtle manner like anti-reservation posts on social media.

Caste-Based Discrimination by Faculty

Kuldeep Kumar, a student, said that professors in universities also add to the discrimination as majority of them belong to upper caste and refuse to accept the fact that people from minority communities are there to study.

He also argued that the professors should rather welcome the section of society which was kept from education for so long.

Speaking on possible solutions, Srikanth Chintala, documentary filmmaker and social activist based in Hyderabad, said, “For these people who are being systematically oppressed, systematically discriminated against by the State or educational institutions, we should have a committee or a structural place in every university apart from the disciplinary committees.”