Class and Caste

Caste hierarchies continue to exist in everyday life and across campuses. Due to the persistence of caste in schools and colleges, long believed to be places for upward mobility and rational thought, these institutions end up becoming spaces where questions of "merit", cultural capital, language and access-or the lack of thereof-are highlighted and ridiculed. The discrimination persists from Kashmir to Kerala. From delayed degrees and stalled promotions to verbal abuse, professional isolation, and sometimes death, these case studies underscore not isolated instances but a pattern

- Ashlin Mathew

"There isn't a Single Day When I Don't Burst into Tears. Is There Any Justice For the Poor?"

Payal Tadvi was a 26-year-old postgraduate medical student at Mumbai's BYL Nair Hospital who allegedly died by suicide in May 2019 following severe caste-based harassment by three senior doctors

FOR nearly six years, Abeda Tadvi has lived with an absence that refuses to heal. She is a mother who lost her daughter to institutional caste discrimination, a cancer survivor battling fragile health and a woman navigating economic distress and exhaustion as she travels repeatedly to courtrooms in search of justice. Each hearing reopens the wounds she carries quietly, sustained only by the belief that no other parent should endure what she has. This fragile hope briefly took shape in the UGC Equity Regulations, 2026, before being shaken once again by the Supreme Court's stay on their implementation.

For Abeda, 60, the UGC Equity Regulations, 2026, offered meaning beyond personal loss. She believed that helping prevent caste discrimination against other students would be a form of justice for her daughter, Payal Tadvi, who died by suicide in 2019 following institutional caste-based discrimination.

Her long silences and tears during the interview showed the unhealed wounds of a grieving mother who is determined to fight for justice against all odds.

Payal, an obstetrics and gynaecology resident at Mumbai's BYL Nair Hospital, belonged to the Tadvi Bhil community, a Scheduled Tribe. She reported sustained caste-based harassment by three senior doctors, including caste-driven verbal abuse and denial of surgical work, before dying by suicide. Her death sparked nationwide outrage and exposed deep-rooted caste discrimination in India's medical institutions.