“For he who lives more lives than one, more deaths than one must die.” when Oscar Wilde said this in one of his poems, he was probably referring to the dual lives homosexual individuals lived in the 19th century. Unfortunately, not much has changed in two hundred years.
In India, it’s possible for an individual to lead multiple lives, simultaneously navigating diverse identities and experiences, such as their queer or LGBTQ+ identity, DBA (Dalit-Bahujan-Adivasi) identity, psychosocial disability or disabilities, and various intersections of these, effectively living multiple lives that intersect and overlap in complex ways.
This author interviewed three individuals who live these multiple identities.
One of them belongs to a Dalit community and was assigned male at birth (AMAB) – a genderqueer person in their early thirties. They were diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder, also known as chronic anxiety, four years ago and are currently undergoing therapy. Their voice seemed to hold the depths of the ocean, so let’s call them Coral.
Another also belongs to a Dalit community and was assigned female at birth (AFAB) – a non-binary person in their mid-twenties, who has struggled with various mental health diagnoses like persistent depression, major depression, anxiety and ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) for the past 10 years. They have tried therapy but haven’t found the right therapist for them yet. Their hair had a certain curl, so let’s call them Twine.
This author also spoke to a bi-romantic woman in her late-thirties who was diagnosed with chronic physical illness since her late teen-early twenties. She too belongs to a Dalit community. She has also been diagnosed with persistent depression and major depression, but has sought therapy only occasionally as SOS. Let’s call her Leaf, as the lines on her face were as pretty as the venation on a leaf viewed against the sun.
With these individuals, this author tried to explore what intersectionality means to their lives and in the mental health space. The interactions started with small talk, then moved on to deeper conversations, beginning with discussions about caste. All the three interviewees spoke about how as children, and even young adults, they were told not to tell anything that happened in their house to the outside world, and especially not to disclose their caste identity.
The caste question
While Coral said they hadn’t faced direct caste hostility and violence because of certain financial and social position their government-employed father held, the picture was not the same for their father. Coral mentioned they had grown up in an extremely casteist part of North India and their father had faced direct caste discrimination and hostility.
While they describe their father as a violent man, Coral notes that their father’s ‘madness’ is due to the caste discrimination he has faced all his life. Though Coral had said in the beginning that they hadn’t faced any caste-related hostility and violence, they did talk about certain micro-aggressions like, “you don’t look Dalit” (referring to Coral not having a darker shade of skin) or a romantic partner saying, “you have Dalit armpits” (referring to a stereotype that Dalits have distinct and strong body odour).
“A lot of our childhood lessons (were) on protection from the outside world, to not borrow anything from any schoolmate, to not go to any friend’s house, I later understood were caste-coded,” said Coral.
Leaf chimed in, she said her parents were overprotective, and discouraged her from making friends. Especially with respect to male friends, her parents would say crude things like, “Do you wish to become a prostitute?” Leaf was later told that while Dalit men cleaned the gutters, Dalit women were devadasis and sex-workers, and hence her parents’ constant fear of her upper-caste male acquaintances.
The interviewees underlined that they found these ‘protective mechanisms’ highly isolating. Leaf revealed she has “lost friends and love” on sharing her caste identity, highlighting the isolation a Dalit woman may face, regardless of whether she chooses to conceal or reveal her identity.
The isolation, both Carol and Leaf agree, also causes tremendous negative impact on their mental health. Twine also says that their caste identity makes social situations for them uncomfortable, it lowers their confidence, “makes me feel so small”. They say this impacts their sense of self and identity and hence affects their mental health.
Apart from the experience of violence and isolation, caste was experienced in another way in both Coral’s and Leaf’s households.
Also read: This Constitution Day, Consider the Queer Dalit
They both had at least one parent who was caste-phobic themselves. The said parent was discriminatory towards persons even lower in the caste hierarchy than themselves and always tried to look like an upper-caste individual themselves. This may indicate that there was certain internalised caste-phobia or shame, and presenting as upper-caste was seen as the only way to gain acceptance in both their households.
The dual identities
Both Coral and Twine had an interesting perspective on how their two identities, caste identity and queerness, are viewed in the Indian context.
They underlined that with caste at least there’s some structure in the Indian society that accepts the existence of that part of their identity, however, queerness is something that is completely invalidated as not existing at all.
Coral shared how they felt unsafe to express their queerness, as threats and violence are common. “I struggle to express my gender queerness visually, mostly because I feel unsafe. It’s not uncommon for feminine men to get beaten up.” They recalled having lost friends on sharing their queer identity. As they struggle to find empathy, they experience further isolation.
“In school I realised that this is something that is not normal. And then of course, there was a lot of lying to myself and suppressing a lot, trying to get rid of these feelings, and of course, always being vigilant to hide that part of yourself. So, I had to hide my Queer identity. But now that I’m all grown, I see my employer, though superficially, talking about queerness and acceptance, whereas, casteism is a hidden venom in the veins of the organisation,” says Leaf, and Twine seconds that thought.
Both Twine and Leaf showed some discomfort accepting their psychosocial health status as they mentioned how an individual is blamed for their own disability. Often in the conversation Twine used euphemisms like, “other challenges”, “same thing” etc. to refer to their mental health condition.
What does intersectionality have to do with mental health? Twine recalls, “Once I got diagnosed, I shared with a very old friend that I have been diagnosed with ADHD. And she said that, oh, you have only very, very few boxes left to tick,” implying that everything that can be wrong with a person may be wrong with Twine — them coming from an oppressed caste background, talking about not feeling like the sex they were assigned at birth, and then finally coming out with an ADHD diagnosis. That all this may be too much for a friend to understand.
This instance shows the complex role of intersectionality in mental health, how having one oppressed identity may cause barriers in finding understanding and acceptance of the other oppressed identity. Further, intersecting identities may aggravate the painful experience of hiding, coming out and facing rejection and frustration for each oppressed identity, leading to a further blow to the individual’s mental health.
“How much can you hide of yourself and really truly be yourself in the world and not go crazy,” Leaf says adding, “because if I’m hiding so much of my identity, I’m shunning so much of my identity if I wish, all of that did not exist in me. My body now hardly exists. It fights with me every day for me to let it go.” She was referring to her chronic physical illness and depression.
Coral reiterates that the isolation created from protective measures against caste discrimination led them to not having social support, which worsened their anxiety, which now hinders their ability to interact with people, and the vicious cycle of isolation goes on.
“The difficult part of this conversation was I think talking about my childhood, talking about my family. One thing that is in my mind more often is that I was really, really, we were really, really asked not to talk about family outside. Sharing much about my identity, myself, my insecurities and my life, I really struggle there quite a lot. In making connections, finding empathy. Making friends is very hard. My disability, that is the anxiety, also actually holds me back from healing from all these other things that I have been carrying,” Coral says.
Similarly, Leaf notes, “I often ask God to have given me one or two less of these oppressed social identities, why did I have to be a woman, Dalit, Queer, and then probably because of that go through both physical and mental disability.”
Mental health support
All the three interviewees shared a common desire that mental health professionals receive training and sensitisation on caste, Queerness, and intersectionality.
“My therapist said caste is not important in therapy,” mentions Twine, her voice laced with disappointment.
“I didn’t even know I could talk about my caste in therapy,” says Leaf, “I would want to see more of our people becoming therapists, I want to be able to find a Dalit therapist.”
Twine recalled a horrid experience they had experienced with a mental health practitioner the first time they opened up about their Queerness. “When my parents took me to a psychiatrist as a thirteen-year-old with panic attacks, and I shared about my queerness, my grown man (AMAB) psychiatrist asked me if I wouldn’t feel anything if he were to touch me.”
The interviewees highlight that mental health practitioners lack understanding of how both caste and Queerness individually impact mental health, and furthermore, are often entirely unaware of the complex intersectionality between these identities, which compounds the issue.
“I think intersectionality is a framework that works as much in mental health as it actually does anywhere else. Intersectionality was something I was missing from the mental health service providers – therapists and psychiatrists – that I encountered on my journey earlier. A lot of them were not, or did not, could not really connect the three distinct things together, the caste, the gender, the sexuality, and then of course, also the disability there,” said Coral.
Sadly, when encouraged to envision an ideal society, at first all three of them hesitated to imagine any future for themselves.
“I really didn’t think I would live this long when I was young,” says Coral. Yet, they did agree that an ideal society would be one where individuals can stop fighting for respect, for survival, where there’s no violence based on someone’s identity, background, caste, ability, etc. They proposed the way to achieve it is institutionally, wherein the leadership of the country takes this up seriously, it has to be a top-down approach.
“Can a country be run based on love and not hate? We’d like to see that,” adds Leaf.
After discussing their challenges, this author finally explored what motivates them to keep going, a question that was initially met with despair and hopelessness.
“What keeps me going? Well, I really don’t know. Every day I ask myself, every day, for the past 30 years or more, I’ve been asking myself, what do I need to wake up for, another day? Since the body goes on, I go on and, I don’t know if, if the body should stop going on tomorrow, I don’t know if I would want it to keep going on,” laments Leaf.
She, however, adds, “I find motivation in knowing that my contributions may have a positive impact on some lives. And that my existence makes a difference to at least a few individuals, like my sibling, my parents, a friend or two, who would be negatively affected if I were no longer present.”
Both Coral and Twine chime in and agree that a vision for the betterment and happiness of their family and community is something that keeps them going. On a more personal level, a sense of visible improvement, personal achievement, and art keeps them going.
Coral says that it’s their therapist who acts as a support system and helps them see both the improvements that have taken place over time, and a future which is still possible.
Coral shares with a slight smile forming on their face, “I really like my therapist. I think she’s more of a wise lady of the tribe. When I talk to her, I feel that there is a future, I feel like there is at least some conversation happening about it. She is a support system basically. She’s a support system and she helps me see the future.”
They add that another thing that keeps them going is “ambition, or let’s say aspiration”. “There is a vision where I’m happy, where my sister is happy and I hope my mother is happy. And there is art. There’s a lot of art that has put in a lot of energy within me. And what fuels that vision is that I can feel changes because, therapy, again, thanks to therapy, I can observe the little changes that happen in my relationships. So I know that things are getting better.”
On a positive note, Twine reflects, “My grandfather used to say that we started with nothing, we are here.”
There is also a strong belief among the interviewees that mental health challenges are not isolated experiences, those are a result of societal oppression due to intersecting marginalised identities, and they all feel that social support, including institutional support, finding meaningful community engagements, loving family and friends, and even therapy, can lead to their recovery.
“I do see this as a psychosocial disability and I’m just beginning to find social support that has been missing throughout these years of discrimination and isolation. I’m hoping for a better future for my body and mind,” concludes Coral.
Meenal Solanki is a counselling psychologist practising in Delhi and is the co-founder of the mental health organisation Mann Conversations. She can be reached on Instagram @mann_conversations.
