Caste shapes how we are seen, how we are heard, and how we are allowed to heal. When we talk about mental health in India, we often assume that everyone assumes equal visibility and access. But caste determines whose pain is believed, whose suffering is treated medically, and whose emotions are dismissed as “overreaction.” In a society structured by graded inequality, mental well-being becomes a privilege, a resource distributed unevenly along caste lines.
Mental health infrastructure is anchored in the caste system
India’s mental health system reflects its system social structure. Who becomes a therapist, who seeks therapy, and who receives healing is filtered through caste. Castes are systematically introduced and reinforced in families, classrooms, and even the workplace. The psychological effects are profound: a constant state of self-doubt, a mind trained to foresee humiliation, and a soul conditioned to believe it deserves less.
Caste shapes how we are seen, how we are heard, and how we are allowed to heal. When we talk about mental health in India, we often assume that everyone assumes equal visibility and access. But caste determines whose pain is believed, whose suffering is treated medically, and whose emotions are dismissed as “overreaction.”
The journey of “Othering” begins with the very first step towards education. In my village, like in thousands across India, the government schools are located in the Savarna Mohalla. Going to school is not so easy for Dalit children. The school building itself, a symbol of promised opportunity, felt like foreign territory. The teachers, almost exclusively of the Savarna caste, shaped everything from where students sat to who attracted attention and whose houses the teachers visited. For Dalit children, education was associated with a constant reminder of “place.” During adolescence, the brain learns to hesitate. This isn’t personal insecurity; It is a structural conditioning, a lesson in caste, imprinted in the developing mind.
FII
Even if studies show Dalit and Adivasi students When people experience greater humiliation and exclusion, official mental health data rarely captures the psychological distress: the resulting fear, self-censorship and quiet despair. The system is designed to individualize suffering. Treat caste trauma as a personal failure.
This dynamic is increasing in higher education. During my time as an engineer, I heard insults disguised as jokes, “merit” used as a weapon, and colleagues equating reticence with incompetence. When counselors were approached, they treated caste trauma as “personal stress.” Names like Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi remind us how institutional neglect kills. But beyond these tragedies, there are thousands who bear invisible wounds. The support mechanisms, like mental health cells, exist on paper, yet when Dalit students seek help, they are told to “move on” as if centuries of humiliation were a problem of mindset!
This cycle does not end with education. Caste seeps into workplaces and relationships. “Family pressure” becomes code for caste pressure, an excuse to maintain endogamy. Even “progressive” families and spaces are often only progressive until they have to deal with caste privilege. In online spaces, Dalit voices are trolled and criticized for speaking about reservations or discrimination. Each such encounter adds another layer to the psychological burden that comes from being a Dalit in spaces not built for our dignity.
Fear and contested land
In the village, our bastis were not built on the land that belonged to us. They were on the edge: government land intended for pasture, land for village expansion, or temple foundation land. Even after living there for generations, our existence was legally precarious. This spatial marginalization creates a unique form of fear. There is a constant, petty fear that any assertion of dignity, any refusal to accept humiliation, could lead to violent reprisals from the villagers of Savarna. If a Dalit were seen as “too confident” if he “crossed the caste line” by falling in love with a person from the dominant caste or simply reciprocating, the entire community could face a boycott, their houses could be demolished, or worse.
During my time as an engineer, I heard insults disguised as jokes, “merit” used as a weapon, and colleagues equating reticence with incompetence. When counselors were approached, they treated caste trauma as “personal stress.”
You always have a choice: stand up for your dignity and risk everything, or keep your mouth shut and suffer in silent, corrosive shame. This dispute is a core wound in the rural Dalit psyche. And it moves with us into the cities. Urban Dalit bastis are also often located on contested or unwanted land. Near railway tracks, flood-prone river banks or industrial areas. A question that comes to mind is how do we measure the cumulative trauma of generations living with the fundamental fear that our homes and safety are conditional?
Caste trauma that Savarna Academy has embraced
In all this, those who have the resources in this country, the Savarna academics, love casteism but do not like to deal with it. They mine Dalit communities for stories, traumas and “data.” The Dalit ghettos are always a tourist destination for these scholars. But Dalit scholars are rarely empowered to shape the framework. “Merit” becomes a convenient myth used to control knowledge production. Most of these Savarnas’ research on caste and mental health is based on Western concepts such as trauma and oppression, which are useful but inadequate. They rarely acknowledge that caste is not just another form of marginalization; It is a deeply Indian system of graded inequality. On the other hand, when Dalit scholars adopt Ambedkarite or community-based approaches, they are dismissed as “activists.” In a caste society, neutrality is a privilege of those in power!
A real merit would be to re-appreciate Dalit epistemology and recognize that communities have long developed their own methods of healing and self-respect outside of the psychiatric perspective.
The blind spot of the political left
During my years in the community, I have also seen that even left-leaning circles do not understand this form of healing. Communist movements often mock Dalits for embracing Buddhism, treating it as “religious escapism.” They reduce liberation to a materialistic framework and ignore the psychological and spiritual dimensions of caste annihilation.
For Dalit communities, healing was never simply about surviving pain; it means regaining dignity. Ambedkarite healing is not a metaphor; it is a lived practice. With every song, every reading group and every act of shared learning, the community rebuilds its spiritual world on the basis of self-respect and solidarity.
But for Dalits, conversion is not a retreat; it is a psychological revolution. It destroys the spiritual hierarchy of caste and rebuilds a moral community based on equality. While the liberation of the Left lies in atheism, the liberation of Ambedkarites lies in ethical transformation, through Dhamma, through compassion and through rejecting caste at its moral roots. It is a reclaiming of agency, a conscious move away from a system that denies you humanity and a move toward a system that affirms that humanity.
There is ample “evidence” showing how Buddhist conversion promotes the dignity and spiritual well-being of Dalits. But will the Savarna Academy ever accept this as a “legitimate” healing method? Or will she continue to dismiss it as cultural bias while clinging to Eurocentric frameworks and their personal biases? The refusal to recognize community-led healing is not an oversight; it is an assertion of caste privilege.
Ambedkarite healing
Amid this landscape of systemic violence and epistemic erasure, I have experienced profound healing in Ambedkarite communal spaces where liberation is both political and emotional. From rural to urban ghettos, songs of Babasaheb echo – songs passed down by elders who resisted through rhythm. These songs, reading groups, and cultural gatherings are not just art or activism; They are collective therapies that arise from the refusal to give up dignity. In these circles, people share without apology, speak up without fear, and learn that their suffering is a structural failure, not an individual one. Ambedkarite spaces restore what caste has taken away: self-esteem as the first step to mental health.
For Dalit communities, healing was never simply about surviving pain; it means regaining dignity. Ambedkarite healing is not a metaphor; it is a lived practice. With every song, every reading group and every act of shared learning, the community rebuilds its spiritual world on the basis of self-respect and solidarity. Our sanity begins where our dignity is restored. And that restoration begins when we refuse to let caste define the boundaries of our minds.