Creating Disability as a Category: Perspectives from West Bengal India
Main Article Content
Keywords
Disability, Language, Identity
Abstract
Postcolonial studies have engaged with discourses of colonial domination. In India, the colonial modernizing project influenced the way in which the postcolonial state grappled with policy frameworks around disability. This paper explores the ways in which disability as a conceptual term has been reshaped over time, which reflect the social attitudes of the communities within which these concepts are used and manipulated.
References
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Advani, L. (1997). Rights by law. [Paper presentation]. National Consultation Meet on Rights of Disabled Children.
Anand, S. (2013). Historicising disability in India: Questions of subject and method. In Disability studies in India: Global discourses, local realities (pp. 35-60). Routledge.
Bayly, S. (2001). Caste, society and politics in India from the eighteenth century to the modern age (Vol. 3). Cambridge University Press.
Bhabha. H.K. (1994). The location of culture. Routledge.
Bhaduri, S. (2021). Categorizing disability in Colonial India: A Case for Deaf Education. M.Phil. dissertation, Institute of Development Studies Kolkata.
Bowers, C.A. (1984). The promise of theory: Education and the politics of cultural change. Teachers College Press.
Braille. (2024). In Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Braille-writing-system
Buckingham, J. (2002). Leprosy in colonial South India: Medicine and confinement. Palgrave.
Burley, M. (2013). Retributive karma and the problem of blaming the victim. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 74(2). 149-165.
Choudhury Kaul, S., Singh Sandhu, M., & Alam, Q. (2021). The lepers, lunatics, the lame, the blind, the infirm, and the making of asylums and benevolent charities: the Indian merchant class and disability in colonial India. Journal of Management History, 27(4), 464-491.
Colpani, G., Mascat, J.M., & Smiet, K. (2022). Postcolonial responses to decolonial interventions. Postcolonial Studies, 25(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2022.2041695
Dalal, A. K. (2002). Disability rehabilitation in a traditional Indian society. sia Pacific Disability Rehabilitation Journal, 15(2), 96-105.
Davis, L. J. (2013). Introduction: Normality, power and culture. In L. J. Davis (Ed.), The disability studies reader (4th ed., pp. 1-14). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203077887
Dhanda, A. (2008). Constructing a new human rights lexicon: Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. International Journal on Human Rights, No. 8.
Gallien, C., &جاليان., ك. (2020). A decolonial turn in the humanities - المنعطف ﺍﻟﻤﻘﻮﱢﺽ للاستعمار في الإنسانيات. Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, 40, 28-58. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26924865
Garland-Thomson, R. (1997). Extraordinary bodies: Figuring physical disability in American culture and literature. Columbia University Press.
Ghai, A. (2003). (Dis)embodied form: Issues of disabled women. Har-Anand Publications.
Ghai, A. (2015). Rethinking disability in India. Routledge.
Ghai, A. (Ed.). (2018). Disability in South Asia: Knowledge and experience. SAGE Publications.
Ghosh, N. (2012) Disabled definitions, impaired policies: Reflections on limits of dominant concepts of disability. Institute of Development Studies Kolkata.
Ghosh, N. (2016). Impaired bodies, gendered lives: Everyday realities of disabled women, Primus Publishers.
Ghosh, N. (2017). Divyang: The latest frontier. Café Dissensus, Issue 38.
Ghosh, N. (2022). Citizenship, rights and persons with disabilities in India. South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 28. https://doi.org/10.4000/samaj.7924
Goodley, D (2013). Dis/entangling critical disability studies. Disability & Society, 28(5), 631-644.
Hinchy, J. (2019). Governing gender and sexuality in colonial India: The Hijra, c. 1850-1900. Cambridge University Press.
Hughes, B., & Patterson, K. (1997). The social model of disability and the disappearing body: Towards a sociology of impairment. Disability & Society, 12(3), 325-340.
Ineese-Nash, N. (2020). Disability as a colonial construct: The missing discourse of culture in conceptualizations of disabled indigenous children. Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 9(3), 28-51. https://doi.org/10.15353/cjds.v9i3.645
Jain, J. C. (1947). Life in ancient India as depicted in the Jain Canons. New Book.
Kalyanpur, M. (1999). Meanings of disability for culturally diverse and immigrant families of children with disabilities. In B. Holzer, A. Vreede, & G. Weigt (Eds.) Disability in different cultures: Reflections on local concepts (pp. 135-165). transcript Verlag.
Karna, G. N. (1999). United Nations and the rights of disabled persons: A study in Indian perspective. APH Publishing.
Karna, G. N. (2001). Disability studies in India: Retrospects and prospects. Gyan Publishing House.
Linton, S. (1998). Claiming disability: Knowledge and identity. New York University Press.
Lonsdale, S. (1990). Women and disability. Macmillan.
Mani, D. R. (1988). The physically handicapped in India: Policy and programme. Ashish Publishing House.
Meekosha, H. (2011). Decolonising disability: Thinking and acting globally. Disability & Society 26(6), 667-682.
Mehrotra, N. (2011). Disability rights movements in India: Politics and practice. Economic and Political Weekly, 46(6), 65-72. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27918121
Miles, M. (1995). Disability in an eastern religious context: Historical perspectives. Disability & Society, 10(1), 49-79. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599550023723
Miles, M. (1997). Disability care and education in 19th century India: Some dates, places & documentation. Disability News: The Newsletter of Disability Division, ActionAid, India, 5(2 suppl.), 1-22.
Miles, M. (1999) Blindness in South and East Asia: Using history to inform development. In B. Holzer, A. Vreede, & G. Weigt (Eds.) Disability in different cultures: Reflections on local concepts (pp. 88-101). transcript Verlag.
Miles, M. (2000). Disability on a different model: Glimpses of an Asian heritage. Disability & Society, 15(4), 603-618. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687590050058206
Miles, M. (2001). Including disabled shildren in Indian schools, 1790s-1890s: Innovations of educational approach and technique. Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of History of Education, 37(2), 291-315. https://doi.org/10.1080/0030923010370202
Miles, M. (2002). Community and individual responses to disablement in South Asian histories: Old traditions, new myths. Asia Pacific Disability Rehabilitation Journal, 13(2), 1-16.
Miles, M. (2006). Signs of Development in Deaf South & South-West Asia: Histories, cultural identities, resistance to cultural imperialism. Independent Living Institute. https://www.independentliving.org/docs7/miles200604.html
Miles, M. (2007). International strategies for disability-related work in developing countries: Historical, modern and critical reflections. (Revised paper first published in the Zeitschrift Behinderung und Dritte Welt, 2003, pp. 96-106.)
Moon type. (2015). In Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Moon-type
Nair, A. (2017). ‘They shall see his face’: Blindness in British India, 1850-1950. Medical History, 61(2), 181-199.
Olivelle, P. (2005). Manu’s code of laws: A critical edition and translation of the Manava-Dharmasastra. (S. Olivelle, Ed. and Trans.). Oxford University Press.
Oliver, M. (1990). Disability and the rise of capitalism. In The politics of disablement. Critical texts in social work and the welfare state (pp. 25-42). Palgrave.
Raghavachariar, N. R. (1965). Hindu law, principles and precedents (6th ed.)., Madras Law Journal Office.
Rao, S. (2001). “A little inconvenience”: Perspectives of Bengali families of children with disabilities on labeling and inclusion. Disability & Society, 16(4), 531-548. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687590120059522
Sharma, A. (2003). Did the Hindus lack a sense of history? Numen, 50(2), 190–227. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3270519
Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books.
Shakespeare, T. (1994). Cultural representation of disabled people: Dustbins for disavowal? Disability and Society, 9(3), 283-299.
Shakespeare, T. (1996). Disability, identity and difference. In C. Barnesand & G. Mercer (Eds.). Exploring the divide. The Disability Press.
Thomas, D. J. (1982). The experience of handicap. Methuen.
Tyagi, J. (2008). Engendering the early household: Brahmanical precepts in the early Grhysutras, middle of the first millenium BCE. Orient Longman.
Waterfield, H. (1875). Memorandum on the census of British India of 1871-72 (Vol. 1349). HM Stationery Office.
Walby, K., & Haan, M. (2012). Caste confusion and census enumeration in Colonial India, 1871-1921. Histoire sociale/Social history, 45(90), 301-318.
Vázquez, R., (2009). Modernity coloniality and visibility: The politics of time. Sociological Research Online, 14(4). http://www.socresonline.org.uk/14/4/7.html
Advani, L. (1997). Rights by law. [Paper presentation]. National Consultation Meet on Rights of Disabled Children.
Anand, S. (2013). Historicising disability in India: Questions of subject and method. In Disability studies in India: Global discourses, local realities (pp. 35-60). Routledge.
Bayly, S. (2001). Caste, society and politics in India from the eighteenth century to the modern age (Vol. 3). Cambridge University Press.
Bhabha. H.K. (1994). The location of culture. Routledge.
Bhaduri, S. (2021). Categorizing disability in Colonial India: A Case for Deaf Education. M.Phil. dissertation, Institute of Development Studies Kolkata.
Bowers, C.A. (1984). The promise of theory: Education and the politics of cultural change. Teachers College Press.
Braille. (2024). In Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Braille-writing-system
Buckingham, J. (2002). Leprosy in colonial South India: Medicine and confinement. Palgrave.
Burley, M. (2013). Retributive karma and the problem of blaming the victim. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 74(2). 149-165.
Choudhury Kaul, S., Singh Sandhu, M., & Alam, Q. (2021). The lepers, lunatics, the lame, the blind, the infirm, and the making of asylums and benevolent charities: the Indian merchant class and disability in colonial India. Journal of Management History, 27(4), 464-491.
Colpani, G., Mascat, J.M., & Smiet, K. (2022). Postcolonial responses to decolonial interventions. Postcolonial Studies, 25(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2022.2041695
Dalal, A. K. (2002). Disability rehabilitation in a traditional Indian society. sia Pacific Disability Rehabilitation Journal, 15(2), 96-105.
Davis, L. J. (2013). Introduction: Normality, power and culture. In L. J. Davis (Ed.), The disability studies reader (4th ed., pp. 1-14). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203077887
Dhanda, A. (2008). Constructing a new human rights lexicon: Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. International Journal on Human Rights, No. 8.
Gallien, C., &جاليان., ك. (2020). A decolonial turn in the humanities - المنعطف ﺍﻟﻤﻘﻮﱢﺽ للاستعمار في الإنسانيات. Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, 40, 28-58. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26924865
Garland-Thomson, R. (1997). Extraordinary bodies: Figuring physical disability in American culture and literature. Columbia University Press.
Ghai, A. (2003). (Dis)embodied form: Issues of disabled women. Har-Anand Publications.
Ghai, A. (2015). Rethinking disability in India. Routledge.
Ghai, A. (Ed.). (2018). Disability in South Asia: Knowledge and experience. SAGE Publications.
Ghosh, N. (2012) Disabled definitions, impaired policies: Reflections on limits of dominant concepts of disability. Institute of Development Studies Kolkata.
Ghosh, N. (2016). Impaired bodies, gendered lives: Everyday realities of disabled women, Primus Publishers.
Ghosh, N. (2017). Divyang: The latest frontier. Café Dissensus, Issue 38.
Ghosh, N. (2022). Citizenship, rights and persons with disabilities in India. South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 28. https://doi.org/10.4000/samaj.7924
Goodley, D (2013). Dis/entangling critical disability studies. Disability & Society, 28(5), 631-644.
Hinchy, J. (2019). Governing gender and sexuality in colonial India: The Hijra, c. 1850-1900. Cambridge University Press.
Hughes, B., & Patterson, K. (1997). The social model of disability and the disappearing body: Towards a sociology of impairment. Disability & Society, 12(3), 325-340.
Ineese-Nash, N. (2020). Disability as a colonial construct: The missing discourse of culture in conceptualizations of disabled indigenous children. Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 9(3), 28-51. https://doi.org/10.15353/cjds.v9i3.645
Jain, J. C. (1947). Life in ancient India as depicted in the Jain Canons. New Book.
Kalyanpur, M. (1999). Meanings of disability for culturally diverse and immigrant families of children with disabilities. In B. Holzer, A. Vreede, & G. Weigt (Eds.) Disability in different cultures: Reflections on local concepts (pp. 135-165). transcript Verlag.
Karna, G. N. (1999). United Nations and the rights of disabled persons: A study in Indian perspective. APH Publishing.
Karna, G. N. (2001). Disability studies in India: Retrospects and prospects. Gyan Publishing House.
Linton, S. (1998). Claiming disability: Knowledge and identity. New York University Press.
Lonsdale, S. (1990). Women and disability. Macmillan.
Mani, D. R. (1988). The physically handicapped in India: Policy and programme. Ashish Publishing House.
Meekosha, H. (2011). Decolonising disability: Thinking and acting globally. Disability & Society 26(6), 667-682.
Mehrotra, N. (2011). Disability rights movements in India: Politics and practice. Economic and Political Weekly, 46(6), 65-72. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27918121
Miles, M. (1995). Disability in an eastern religious context: Historical perspectives. Disability & Society, 10(1), 49-79. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599550023723
Miles, M. (1997). Disability care and education in 19th century India: Some dates, places & documentation. Disability News: The Newsletter of Disability Division, ActionAid, India, 5(2 suppl.), 1-22.
Miles, M. (1999) Blindness in South and East Asia: Using history to inform development. In B. Holzer, A. Vreede, & G. Weigt (Eds.) Disability in different cultures: Reflections on local concepts (pp. 88-101). transcript Verlag.
Miles, M. (2000). Disability on a different model: Glimpses of an Asian heritage. Disability & Society, 15(4), 603-618. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687590050058206
Miles, M. (2001). Including disabled shildren in Indian schools, 1790s-1890s: Innovations of educational approach and technique. Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of History of Education, 37(2), 291-315. https://doi.org/10.1080/0030923010370202
Miles, M. (2002). Community and individual responses to disablement in South Asian histories: Old traditions, new myths. Asia Pacific Disability Rehabilitation Journal, 13(2), 1-16.
Miles, M. (2006). Signs of Development in Deaf South & South-West Asia: Histories, cultural identities, resistance to cultural imperialism. Independent Living Institute. https://www.independentliving.org/docs7/miles200604.html
Miles, M. (2007). International strategies for disability-related work in developing countries: Historical, modern and critical reflections. (Revised paper first published in the Zeitschrift Behinderung und Dritte Welt, 2003, pp. 96-106.)
Moon type. (2015). In Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Moon-type
Nair, A. (2017). ‘They shall see his face’: Blindness in British India, 1850-1950. Medical History, 61(2), 181-199.
Olivelle, P. (2005). Manu’s code of laws: A critical edition and translation of the Manava-Dharmasastra. (S. Olivelle, Ed. and Trans.). Oxford University Press.
Oliver, M. (1990). Disability and the rise of capitalism. In The politics of disablement. Critical texts in social work and the welfare state (pp. 25-42). Palgrave.
Raghavachariar, N. R. (1965). Hindu law, principles and precedents (6th ed.)., Madras Law Journal Office.
Rao, S. (2001). “A little inconvenience”: Perspectives of Bengali families of children with disabilities on labeling and inclusion. Disability & Society, 16(4), 531-548. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687590120059522
Sharma, A. (2003). Did the Hindus lack a sense of history? Numen, 50(2), 190–227. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3270519
Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books.
Shakespeare, T. (1994). Cultural representation of disabled people: Dustbins for disavowal? Disability and Society, 9(3), 283-299.
Shakespeare, T. (1996). Disability, identity and difference. In C. Barnesand & G. Mercer (Eds.). Exploring the divide. The Disability Press.
Thomas, D. J. (1982). The experience of handicap. Methuen.
Tyagi, J. (2008). Engendering the early household: Brahmanical precepts in the early Grhysutras, middle of the first millenium BCE. Orient Longman.
Waterfield, H. (1875). Memorandum on the census of British India of 1871-72 (Vol. 1349). HM Stationery Office.
Walby, K., & Haan, M. (2012). Caste confusion and census enumeration in Colonial India, 1871-1921. Histoire sociale/Social history, 45(90), 301-318.
Vázquez, R., (2009). Modernity coloniality and visibility: The politics of time. Sociological Research Online, 14(4). http://www.socresonline.org.uk/14/4/7.html
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Aug 9, 2024
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Author Biographies
Nandini Ghosh, Institute of Development Studies Kolkata
Nandini Ghosh is a Faculty at the Institute of Development Studies Kolkata. Her areas of interest are Critical Disability Studies, Gender Studies and qualitative research methodology. She has published a monograph Impaired Bodies Gendered Lives: Everyday Realities of Disabled Women (Primus Books 2016) and co-authored a book on domestic violence titled The Violent Domestic: Law, its Practice, and Strategies of Survival (Zubaan 2022). She has edited a volume titled Interrogating Disability in India: Theory and Practice (Springer 2016) and co-edited Caste and Gender in Contemporary India: Power, Privilege and Politics (Routledge 2018).
Suchandra Bhaduri , Institute of Development Studies Kolkata
Suchandra Bhaduri is a Ph.D. Research Scholar at the Institute of Development Studies Kolkata. Her area of research in her Ph.D. focuses on exploring Disability History in Colonial India with a particular focus on the education of the disabled. She has completed her M.Phil. in Development Studies with a specialization in History from the Institute of Development Studies Kolkata, affiliated with the University of Calcutta in 2021.