Dr Payal Tadvi, an Adivasi Muslim doctor from the Bhil Tadvi community, was forced to commit suicide after persistent caste-based harassment by seniors at the BYL Nair Medical College. That yet another institution failed to protect its dalit/adivasi student is hardly surprising. As a society that has seen at least a dozen 'quota students', including Rohith Vermula, Bal Mukund Bharti, Anil Kumar Meena and Senthil Kumar take their lives because of casteist harassment, we have no business being surprised when one more name is added to the list. In fact, the impunity with which Indian colleges, universities and supervisors tend to ignore complaints of caste-based discrimination and the reckless humiliation that 'upper' caste students practice against their dalit and adivasi peers, we should half expect it. Tadvi probably did. Perhaps that’s why after months of rebukes from 'upper' caste seniors, she confessed to a friend over WhatsApp that her parents worried that 'she might try to kill herself'.

When she did allegedly take her life. it was probably because the trauma of daily humiliation and threats to her career that had escalated in the last year, became too much to endure. The discrimination against Tadvi started soon after she joined the hospital for an MD degree in gynaecology and shared a room with two 'upper' caste seniors. According to reports, Tadvi's mother said they would use her mattress to wipe their dirty feet after using the bathroom and litter around her sleeping area. Since her death, the evidently 'upper' caste women have claimed that they knew nothing about her caste. But their bullying, which fits into textbook casteist harassment, reeks of 'upper' caste superiority challenged by a 'lower' caste woman behaving as their equal. They wanted to show Tadvi, an Adivasi Muslim woman who had sought admission through the SC/ST category, her 'rightful' place, which for them existed somewhere between the bathroom and the bin.