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Family physician Atharva Joshi discusses his article, “How the system hunts physicians who refuse to kneel.” He argues that the health care system often targets minority physicians not through overt actions but via subtle, bureaucratic processes—a form of systemic discrimination based on culture or perceived difference, which he terms a “hunt.” Drawing from personal experience and observations, Atharva contends this marginalization is a widespread issue affecting many physicians deemed “Other.” Rather than simply enduring, he advocates for strategic resistance, outlining five provocative tactics: the Chameleon Principle (becoming quietly indispensable), Weaponized Absence (allowing one’s removal to create a disruptive void), Reputation Obfuscation (diversifying one’s professional identity), Narrative Supremacy (controlling one’s story proactively), and the Yamdoot Doctrine (strategically releasing documented evidence of injustice when cornered). The discussion centers on empowering targeted physicians to fight back deliberately against systemic bias.
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Transcript
Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast. Today we welcome Atharva Joshi; he’s a family physician, and today’s KevinMD article is “How the system hunts physicians who refuse to kneel.” Atharva, welcome to the show.
Atharva Joshi: Thank you so much for having me on your podcast. It means a lot more to me than I think anyone might even know.
For the better part of the past month, I’ve been painfully aware that this is going to be the only time my children ever hear me speak. One of my inspirations actually for this as a result, and part of the reason I’m here, is a former professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, Dr. Randy Pausch. He knew he was only going to get one shot to leave something behind for his kids too. And so if my kids ever hear this, I really want them to know exactly who I was.
Kevin Pho: All right. Well, thank you again for sharing your story. So just tell us a little bit about yourself and then the KevinMD article that you shared with us.
Atharva Joshi: So I am a family physician. I was previously based out of this tiny island called Molokai, Hawaii. Ever since the last two doctors died, Dr. Thomas and Dr. Luli, they haven’t had a single doctor on the island who could take care of everybody there. So for the last few years at least, there was no doctor. Molokai is a very small island in the middle of the Hawaiian Island chain. You get a nine-seater Cessna that comes about twice a week if you’re lucky and the weather holds. So I was really out there.
Kevin Pho: All right, so tell us about your story. What made you write on KevinMD?
Atharva Joshi: This story wasn’t about why me and my children’s mother were together or why we separated or what went wrong between two people, but it’s about what happens when a system decided that someone like me doesn’t deserve to be a father. Not because I caused harm, not because I was a danger, but because of how I was born, how I think, and what I refuse to kneel to. That’s the story I wanted to tell today. And everything else is really pretty irrelevant.
The gory legal details: I got a bunch of phone calls after I published, so I linked them in the comment section of the article, but this was never about my children’s mother. It’s about the system that handed her a loaded courtroom and a culture that told her it was OK to casually pull the trigger for an ultimatum.
The brief story is I was arrested by a SWAT team after a false shooting charge was filed. Charges were dismissed. No evidence. The window was created for abducting my children. Then I dealt with the initial rounds of criminal charges and arrest records manufactured with, again, no proof, some undeserved money paid to the state judiciary. Later, the government did me the favor of expunging its own mistakes.
Then I entered the family court system expecting restitution because the threat of erasing me from my children’s lives had been carried out. Along the way, of course, my home was destroyed. My dog was locked in a bathroom filled with broken glass, and risk-free defamation, slander, and libel was sprayed all over the internet.
Kevin Pho: So tell us what happened regarding your medical practice and how that interplayed with what you did professionally.
Atharva Joshi: So I basically got attacked on all six fronts simultaneously. They attacked me at my work. My investors pulled out. They attacked my culture. They attacked my spirituality and ethics. I got slandered publicly, and then they took my kids. As a result, I no longer have a home. I no longer have a practice. And that’s part of the reason I’m here in DC.
Kevin Pho: All right. And regarding some of the tactics they chose to attack you with, just from a professional standpoint as a physician, explain how they tried to attack you.
Atharva Joshi: It might be a little easier to start with how I struck back, and that might explain how I was attacked a little bit more line by line. At the end of the day, there’s that whole model minority script: sit down, shut up, save face. So I wrote a very restrained article, something publishable, something they couldn’t twist into “growling in the savage tongue” or “angry brown man,” because even in publishing, I still had to translate my fire into something palatable. Whereas the black coats and the black robes got to spit acid and call it procedure.
If you really want the details, this was taken well, well beyond me. This has everything to do with a court in Maui County accepting, for nine months unchallenged, the signed legal argument: “Petitioner’s false narrative regarding his caretaking lies his culture. Men did not babysit or care for children. That’s women’s work only.” Here’s the thing: I didn’t wear a Guan [assuming intended word] up to court. I wore scrubs or a suit, same as doctors Tom, Dick, and Harry.
So in one sentence, the Second Circuit court of Maui County entered the most ignorant precedent into law this century, erased my American identity, and rightly offended 1.3 billion people across two countries. That was the crux of their legal argument. They threw everything in the kitchen sink, attacked me on all those six fronts of functioning adulthood, and failing that, played the race card.
Kevin Pho: So how did you respond? What happened next?
Atharva Joshi: I lost, which is why this case is now precedent. They called me un-American. So what I decided to do was to respond in the most American way possible: I made a sign and I marched on Washington, DC so the world would see what was done, and then I unsheathed my pen so the world would know what was done.
Kevin Pho: So tell me some of the lessons that you’ve learned from this experience.
Atharva Joshi: So many articles written by physicians that I read have something to do with complaining about how power is wielded, but they all drip with some of the same fears that make them very effective at just being the same recycled TED talk the AMA gives every year about how they’re serving us for dinner. Academia teaches us to speak in riddles, business and politics teaches us to speak in lies, and they don’t teach us any other language in medical school.
So the first lesson is: power speaks plainly. Fortunately, I had a lot of teachers that helped me with this, some living, some dead. These last few lonely months, the loudest whispers were a good Reverend Dr. King for stoic resolve in the face of what should break you. Shivaji taught me what command looks like when you’re outgunned, outnumbered, and surrounded by betrayal. Durkheim taught me right from wrong. Lui taught me that tactics don’t just belong to warriors; they belong to those who move before the enemy breathes. And my more modern inspiration: Commander Jocko Willink. Because sometimes it takes a Navy SEAL who eats souls for breakfast, for the can of nails, to teach you more about nonviolence, strategy, and the art of healing than any philosopher ever could.
I’m not saying I’m an angel, but that doesn’t make me a demon either. It makes me human, and that’s something the system doesn’t understand—not about me, not about anyone. Physicians do. We know imperfection doesn’t make someone disposable. People come to us at their worst, and we still see the divinity behind their eyes. We know being human is the whole point.
So if we could empower—and I mean actually empower, not hire another administrator to oversee another program—we could empower the only group in America that still seems to care about honor and fiduciary responsibility. We might make the world a better place.
And that was maybe the biggest lesson I learned out of this. A few of my friends reached out, sort of quaking in their boots because they knew what I might do to a system that kidnapped my children. And they were right to be afraid. But the most violent and dangerous weapon there is, the one that I’m swinging, is not bloodshed; it’s human conscience. So when people reached out to me asking questions after reading my article, I was really very grateful. But I really hope I inspired them to do something thoughtful and good. And that was the key.
Kevin Pho: So during this ordeal, tell us about the support that you had to guide you and what it meant to you. Obviously, a lot of physicians aren’t versed in what you were going through. So tell me about the support that you received and what kind of help did you lean on during this experience?
Atharva Joshi: So unfortunately, part of the way the system hunts you is they isolate you. They don’t just go after you; they’ll go after soft targets. They’ll go after the people that stand with you. So everybody I leaned on sooner or later got attacked. My CPA was charged with criminal offenses—fabricated, but enough to scare him off. My family members, you can’t really lean on them because then their finances get pulled in for aiding and abetting.
Most of the support that I got was essentially through WhatsApp and people reaching out with messages. My employer was able to help me a little bit up until the business end of things got attacked, at which point they had to pull out as well.
Kevin Pho: So tell me about your practice, your medical practice during this time. When did it end? How long were you able to still practice as a physician with this personal ordeal surrounding you?
Atharva Joshi: I was able to hang in there for about nine months. And so, that was essentially the fading end of things. The human body’s OS hasn’t been updated in the last hundred thousand years; I can go practice in any country that I want. And so I intend to.
But as far as my practice in America, what occurred was essentially every time I went to court, it was $5,000 and a full day lost, whether the judge showed up or not. Which meant we weren’t seeing patients, and we were running a small charity practice. This wasn’t HCA that can afford to eat hundreds of thousands in losses and not even notice. This was a small clinic. We had Mike, Shalia, Annie, and me—five people. That’s it. We were trying to take care of an island of officially 7,000; usually, it’s more like 3,500 at any given point in time.
Kevin Pho: So you mentioned that during this ordeal, the proverbial race card was played. So how was your race thrown into all of this? What are some examples of that?
Atharva Joshi: It was the fact that my parenting was attacked, not on the basis of action. He literally says—this is, I’m quoting you out of the actual legal filing—”Petitioner’s false narrative regarding his caregiving lies his culture. Men don’t care for or raise children; that’s women’s work.” Nobody specified what that culture was. So if it’s American culture, that’s even worse. And if it’s not American culture, which culture?
Kevin Pho: Now, did other physicians that you said reached out to you? Did you hear stories from people in similar predicaments?
Atharva Joshi: No, mostly it was thoughts and prayers and support, which, I know that line sometimes gets a little bit of ire, especially in physician circles, but it really was very, very helpful just to know that there were people out there that were still rooting for me in whatever way they could.
Kevin Pho: Now what’s next for you? You mentioned perhaps practicing overseas. So where are you now? What’s the next part of your story?
Atharva Joshi: So I am still in DC right now. I’ve reached out to members of Congress. I’ve tried to reach out to the executive. Something interesting: in a state that’s primarily brown people, there isn’t a single civil rights attorney in the entire state of Hawaii that’s Black or brown. So everyone was like, “Why don’t you just get a new lawyer?” And what, pay another $15,000 to get the runaround?
So that’s been my current strategy. I’ve been coming up against a wall of silence, even here in DC. So from here, my next strategy will be most likely leaving for India: writing, teaching, and trying to provide charity services there where I don’t necessarily have to apologize for who I am.
Kevin Pho: And for other physicians who may be undergoing a similar trial to what you went through, what kind of advice do you have for them?
Atharva Joshi: So for them, I have probably this advice: injustice is going to happen. Anti-injustice; team anti-injustice doesn’t vote team red or team blue. It votes smart. It plays smarter. Whining about DEI isn’t going to achieve anything, but a recording sent to HR with an implicit threat to BCC CNN or Fox News will move mountains overnight.
And if that sounded like too much, ask why you think so and who benefits when you back away? I’m not going to be around here, so I’ll be sipping chai on the other side, but somebody who reads this and learns from this, they’re going to be coming. And they’ll know how to do this, not just administer; they’ll know how to wield power honorably. Because I think that’s the next step for physicians: it’s time for us to learn how to speak in the language of power and fight back on equal terms.
Kevin Pho: Now looking at you, I’m going to assume that you’re relatively young or relatively early on in your career. So I hear stories sometimes of minority physicians, early career, sometimes being targeted for whatever reason. Obviously, in your story, it’s a personal story that led to professional persecution, but just in general, taking a step back: for those minority physicians, early career, who may not be from the United States or may be from another country, they could be targeted for whatever reason. Do you see that happening, and is that a fair assessment? And if so, what are some ways that they can protect themselves against that situation?
Atharva Joshi: So I think there’s really only one defense, which is you’re going to have to work three times as hard to be heard half as much. And when someone comes after you, make sure they’re bringing evidence, not arrogance. And when they bring arrogance, like I said, send a recording to HR, threaten to leak it.
Attack power exactly where it’s scared to look. Dr. King’s words are actually etched on a monument here in DC, and he wrote or spoke: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can.” So when you shine a light on people that think they can operate in the dark and do whatever it is that they want to do or say, shine a light; the cockroaches will scatter.
Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Atharva Joshi. He’s a family physician. Today’s KevinMD article is “How the system hunts physicians who refuse to kneel.” Atharva, let’s end with some take-home messages that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience.
Atharva Joshi: If I may, I’d love to leave a last couple words to my children.
To my son Hannu, who may not remember me: I leave silence turned to strategy.
To my daughter, Aria: I leave this line. What the world sees as chaos and insanity is a web woven with such delicate complexity only fools call it madness. What they call chaos is choreography. What they call madness is structure they can’t decode—not because it isn’t real, but because some people would rather denigrate than admit blindness.
Kevin Pho: Thank you so much for sharing your story, time, and perspective. Thanks again for coming on the show.
Atharva Joshi: Thank you so much for having me.