India, Jan. 20 -- On 16 August 1992, Chuni Kotal, a 27-year-old woman, committed suicide by hanging at her husband's home in Kharagpur, an industrial city about 130 km west of Kolkata. Kotal was a postgraduate student in anthropology at Vidyasagar University in the Paschim Medinipur district of southern West Bengal; she was also the first woman from her community of Lodhas, a "de-notified tribe", to graduate in 1985. At the university, however, she was allegedly harassed by a faculty member because of her tribal background. Repeatedly marked absent from class despite being present, Kotal was debarred from taking exams and also publicly humiliated.

In an article for the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), on 29 August 1992, the Bengali w...