Author: Dr.Vaishali Vilas Sonavane
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Caste, Humiliation, and the Body: Structural Violence and Its Psychological Impact
On April 29, 2026, in Udaipur, Dalit bride Pooja Meghwal was forcibly pulled down from a horse during her wedding procession and assaulted. Days later, she returned and rode again in a symbolic act of defiance, asserting dignity and equality in public spaces. This event is not an isolated conflict between individuals. It is a…
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Healing, Survival, and the Path to Ease
Reclaiming Worthiness Beyond Titles and Trauma By Dr Vaishali Sonavane This morning I woke up with that same notion—and a choking, suffocating feeling of being unworthy, undeserving, unwanted, denied, rejected, reduced, and refused. I was in pain. I started feeling anxious—for no apparent reason. This has been there since I can remember. This is the…
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A Trauma-Informed, Attachment-Based Guide for People Living with DID — and for Those Living Alongside Them
Article by Dr. Vaishali Sonavane Abstract Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is among the most misunderstood trauma-related conditions. Frequently sensationalised, minimised, or mischaracterised as manipulation or pathology, DID is in fact an adaptive survival response to overwhelming and inescapable developmental trauma, most often occurring in early childhood. Many people live for decades with DID without language…
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My Story –
Dr. Vaishali Sonavane We decided that I would go to Persuasive Education in Pune. I was in the 5th standard. Leaving home was the toughest thing I had ever done. I cried continuously—silently, inside myself—until I reached the hostel, thinking only of my mother. The night before my journey, my mother was crying. I told…
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Survival, Rejection, and Dignity: A Dalit–Queer–Disabled Feminist Intervention into Intimacy, Power, and Emotional Life
Article by Dr. Vaishali Sonavane Abstract This article develops a Dalit–Queer–Disabled feminist framework to understand survival, rejection, and relational harm as structurally produced conditions rather than individual failures. Drawing from Ambedkarite anti-caste movement, queer and disabled feminist scholarship, trauma and attachment theory, and critical theories of power, the paper examines how caste, gender, sexuality, disability,…
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Survival as Inheritance: The Historical Life of Dalit Women and the Making of Generational Scarcity
A Canonical Case Study: Anita (Part II)By Dr. Vaishali Sonavane Abstract This two-part article examines the life narrative of Anita (pseudonym), a Dalit Ambedkarite feminist activist, as a canonical case of caste-based survival produced, transmitted, and negotiated across generations. Drawing on in-depth interviews recorded in 2014 as part of the author’s doctoral research— Lived Experiences…
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Survival as Inheritance: The Historical Life of Dalit Women and the Making of Generational Scarcity — A Canonical Case Study, Anita (Part 1)
By Dr. Vaishali Sonavane Intro Note: This is the first part of a two-part series exploring the life narrative of Anita (pseudonym), a Dalit Ambedkarite feminist activist. This section traces her childhood, schooling, and early encounters with caste, situating them within the Caste-Based Survival Trauma (CBST) framework. Abstract This article examines the life narrative of…
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Survival as Inheritance: The Historical Life of Dalit Women and the Making of Generational Scarcity
(This article examines historically produced survival regimes among Dalit women. Dalit women who have broken these structures and are thriving beyond them will be taken up in a subsequent article.) By Dr. Vaishali Sonavane Abstract This article examines how survival among Dalit women is historically produced, relationally transmitted, and structurally enforced, creating intergenerational patterns of…
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Integrated Theoretical and Methodological FrameworkPositioning Caste-Based Survival Within Contemporary Trauma Theory
Abstract Contemporary trauma frameworks, such as complex trauma, Disorders of Extreme Stress Not Otherwise Specified (DESNOS), and Cumulative Trauma Disorder (CTD), have established that psychological distress may arise from prolonged and repeated exposure to harm rather than discrete events. However, these models remain insufficiently theorised in relation to social structures that systematically organise exposure to…
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When Rejection Becomes Self‑Betrayal
Unpacking the Trauma Trigger and the Path to Alchemical Healing If this feels familiar, you are not broken When someone hates, ridicules, neglects, rejects, demotivates, devalues, disrespects, disconnects, withdraws, becomes difficult, or punishes you for no visible reason, the pain is not only interpersonal. Something deeper happens inside. You don’t just feel hurt — you…
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The Dalit Brain: How Caste Rewires the Mind, Body, and Future
By Dr. Vaishali Vilas Sonavane Abstract Caste is often framed as a social, cultural, or political system, but emerging neurobiological research reveals that long-term oppression fundamentally reshapes the human nervous system. For Dalits, centuries of humiliation, forced labor, threat of sexual violence, segregation, and caste terror have produced neurobiological adaptations that prioritize survival over safety.…