When Pranit More asked Sejal Pawar, a final-year MBBS student at Seth GS Medical College and KEM Hospital, whether she and her batchmates joked about cadavers, Pawar replied: ‘Yes, as to what is the size and all.’
The size she was referring to was not that of the heart or liver, but of the cadaver’s penis.
All of this started because of that Rs 370 man, Himanshu Jangra. Amid the controversy over his vasooli remark on More’s show, Pawar’s old video clip from More’s show, too, resurfaced online. Some called out Pawar for her remarks, while some called for her expulsion from the college.
But the best were the doctors. The All India Medical Students’ Association (AIMSA) strongly condemned the ‘insensitive, irresponsible, and deeply disrespectful portrayal of cadavers and body donors for the purpose of entertainment or comedy by Pranit More (Comedian) and others’ in a Press Statement. More should have been named. Good. But who were these ‘others’? I wonder, was this a group of individuals who were difficult to count on fingertips? Or were their names not available in the public domain? Or that naming them would have covered all the space available on the letterhead? It’s difficult to ignore any of the reasons. Yet, ‘others’ was used instead of naming the student.
What intrigued me more was the last line mentioned in AIMSA’s statement: ‘Respect the Donor. Respect Medical Ethics. Respect Humanity.’ I mean, how will the student respect any of them when the student isn’t even getting called out for the wrong, but instead being protected by its own fraternity? That merely demanding ‘an immediate public apology’ and ‘strict action against those responsible for this unacceptable act’ won’t solve the problem. Accountability begins with identifying who is responsible. Without this, everything is just an effort to protect a person who belongs to your profession, while naming the other who doesn’t.
Following AIMSA, Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (KEM MARD), the official resident doctors’ association for Seth GS Medical College and King Edward Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, said the remarks made by ‘an undergraduate student’ were ‘inappropriate.’ Again, who was this ‘undergraduate student’? Was the student’s name so difficult to retain that avoiding mentioning her looked like an easier choice? It appears that KEM MARD and AIMSA learned the same lesson in medical ethics: condemn the conduct, but not the colleague.
Now comes the strangest part of this whole controversy. Pawar’s college has instituted a two-member committee to ‘inquire’ into the matter. But what would this committee inquire? Whether Pawar had made the remark or not? Or whatever Pawar said was acceptable or not? Pawar herself has accepted that the remark was made indeed by her in an apology video released after the controversy erupted. Although she appeared considerably less remorseful four weeks ago, when she laughed about the episode on a podcast recounting what had happened on More’s show. Full podcast can be watched here. As for the acceptability of the remark, the dean of Pawar’s college has himself called it ‘unacceptable.’ So, if Pawar has already admitted making the remark, and the college administration has already deemed it unacceptable, what exactly is the inquiry expected to find?
What punishment does Pawar deserve is something I won’t comment on. But the doctors should have been more accountable in this case, which didn’t seem and doesn’t seem even now. Those who save lives should save medical ethics by not merely mentioning it out of convenience, but by living it. One way of doing so is calling out the individual who committed a wrong.
