Indian professor sues Harvard

Harvard Medical School assistant professor Rajendra Badgaiyan, who was doing his residency at a Harvard-sponsored teaching hospital, has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that four years of racial discrimination and recent instances of defamation have hampered his career in psychiatry and hurt his productivity.

"It is unfortunate and painful that the action of my superior and the institutions running the programme have caused all this," Badgaiyan, 40, told rediff.com

"I would not have wanted to file this suit at all."

Badgaiyan's suit, filed on September 28 in the US District Court in Boston, seeks an end to the discrimination as well as unspecified damages from Harvard, his supervisor Dr Grace J Mushrush and the secretary of the US Department of Veterans Affairs, which ran the teaching hospital.

"I am not the only Indian who has faced similar, overt discrimination at this facility," he said in a phone interview from his Boston home. 

'Other medical professionals of Indian and South Asian extraction… also recounted to Dr Badgaiyan their own observations of negative remarks concerning South Asians as well,' according to the complaint.

He said he hoped there would be an out of court settlement, adding that he did not want to be known as a troublemaker.

Mushrush did not return calls for her comments. Hospital spokespersons have refused to comment, saying they do not have all the legal documents pertaining to the case before them.

Paul H Merry, the Boston attorney for Badgaiyan, told the local media that his client "really didn't have a choice, unless he decided that he was going to let go of the whole thing".

About Badgaiyan being willing to have a settlement, Merry said: "I don't think it does physicians much good to go to court very often."

"I really, really want to pursue my career," Badgaiyan, who came to America in 1995 after his psychiatric studies in India, said. "My work has been widely recognised and I have 60 publications in reputed journals, but my productivity has been going down because of the discrimination against and false information about me."

He said he sought out the court action after exhausting various other avenues, including internal complaints.

"I bore this for four years and finally, I said I will take a stand, and if this suit does not help me, I hope it would at least bring to attention similar discrimination suffered by Indians and help people to stand up on their feet and let their grievances out."

"Professionals from India often take a long time to take action like I have taken. That is our nature," he added.

Badgaiyan claimed in his suit that his supervisor Mushrush made "disparaging remarks concerning physicians of Indian extraction and about the quality of medical institutions and medical education in India".

He said ever since he joined the residency programme in 2001, Mushrush had made life difficult for him, soon after he initially received "outstanding evaluations" in the programme.

The suit also alleges that she forced him to repeat training that he had already passed with a grade of "outstanding" or "good". She also allegedly manipulated his schedule so that it took him six to nine months to complete parts of the programme he could have completed in about two months.

"The worst thing was that she provided false and derogatory information about me to the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine, " he said, repeating his claims from the suit. And that action, he asserted, has delayed his licensure to practise psychiatry. As a result, the suit says, Badgaiyan is in jeopardy of losing a fellowship that he was supposed to start this year.

Mushrush, who directs South Shore Psychiatry Residency Training Programme at the Veterans Affairs Medical Centre in Brockton, where Badgaiyan worked, is targeted in another pending discrimination case, newspapers in Boston reported recently.

The suit alleges that she withdrew an offer of admission after learning that applicant Moira Locke, who is now seeking $10 million in damages, was pregnant.