Cruelty is everywhere
A tragic headline:
Mumbai: Protests held over suicide of Dr Payal Tadvi who killed self due to abuse from seniors
Abuse why? Caste.
Payal committed suicide due to alleged casteist abuse in a Mumbai hospital and demanded stringent action against the culprits here on Monday.
The Students Federation of India (SFI) and other student organisations staged vociferous protests against the recent suicide of a post-graduate woman medical student due to alleged casteist abuse in a Mumbai hospital and demanded stringent action against the culprits here on Monday.
“This is the first time in Maharashtra that any post-graduate medico has taken the extreme step of ending her life after alleged harassment on grounds of her caste background,” Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD) General Secretary Dr. Deepak Mundhe told IANS.
…
Hailing from a Muslim tribal family of Jalgaon, Dr. Tadvi, 25, was a second-year post-graduate student in obstetrics and gynaecology and had earlier served in the tribal areas of Gadchiroli.
She and her family had in the past complained to the hospital authorities of the alleged ragging, taunting on her tribal status, not permitting her inside the operation theatre, posting derogatory messages on social media, and other forms of harassment by the three senior women doctors.
There are little trumps everywhere.
I’m confused. It says she’s Muslim. I didn’t think they had a caste system. Does being Muslim put you in the untouchable or some other lower caste? I know there are major Hindu/Islamic tensions in this area of the world, but I’ve never heard of caste with Muslims before, just that being perceived negatively, and often treated badly, by Hindus.
I’m not clear on that either. There’s also “tribal” which has its own special meaning in India and Pakistan.
And here I was thinking the “seniors” in question were “old people” not “doctors higher in seniority.” I didn’t get that until the last sentence of the post!
More simply put: Not One of Us. Whoever we are, there’s always going to be some “us” we aren’t going to be part of. Some usses are more vicious and inforgiving than others. I hope I never meet one that’s as awful to me as these doctors were to this medical student.
If it is Hindu caste based, how can they tell? Or tribal. Are “tribes” morphologically different enough to tell?
I think that kind of thing is part of the paperwork in India. I’m not sure and I don’t know details, but I think it’s a kind of thing that employers know about employees, and others do too. It’s “official” so it’s in your record. It’s not a kind of thing you can just keep to yourself.
Maybe I’ve just concluded that from all the stories about caste persecution, because it’s not about morphological differences. Although, of course, skin color makes a difference in status. No prizes for guessing what’s more approved than what.
Oops sorry for saying “kind of thing” 19 times.
Not a problem Ophelia. After all it was only three times. Not that I was pedantic enough to count. Or double check my count. Or reply.
I seem to recall reading once that because the members of the different castes can only marry within their own caste (or tribe), surnames are often clear indications of people’s backgrounds, so surname A & B can only belong to caste x, surames C & D to caste y, and so on.
^^^ LITERAL VIOLENCE