How caste and gender intersect with disability in India

“There is no greater disability in society than the inability to seeing a person as more.” -Robert M. Hensel

Disability is not a disease. It’s just a difference in a person. However, these two simple concepts fail to make their way into our regular discourse on disability. Society fails to accept disabled people into its fold. This nature of discourse around the same has been popularized by the fame of the medical model of disability in the disability discourse rather than its social model. According to the medical model of disability, impairments in a person, something that is different from what we perceive to be the normal physiology of a person, is what disables a person. This model sees disability as something to be cured only with professional help.

Apparently, nothing in this concept appears to be problematic, given that we need any disease that is affecting us to be cured. However, the issue lies in the model’s effort to cure the disability. While a person might be born with an impairment and need medical treatment, they are disabled by the way society is designed and most importantly how it perceives and conceives disability. While a person might be unable to walk up the stairs to an interview because of the different physiology of their leg, what disables that person from participating in that interview is the lack of the provision for a ramp along with a flight of stairs or the absence of an elevator. The medical model seeks to cure the person, thus implying that there is a problem with the disabled person, but fails to make an approach to “cure” or change the way the various facilities are designed. This approach has had a serious impact, especially during the pandemic. Many people during the pandemic have been deprived of their right to education but the problem has become paramount for those with disabilities. In the era of scanned documents, they fail to catch up with their friends unless someone reads out these documents for them, a slack probability for students stuck away from home and maintaining social distance from friends and roommates. A 20-year-old deaf and blind college student from Delhi reported in a study conducted by a collaboration of the two NGOs Rising Flame and Sightsavers: “No special assistance, no captions or text are shared. Most of the assignments are PDFs scanned and sent which means someone needs to read out to me.” Earlier, at least while walking on the road, people with disabilities would be assisted by some others, albeit not always, but the pandemic and the fear surrounding it prevented many from undertaking such noble deeds, since everyone was always scared of being afflicted by the virus. As reported in the same study by a 39-year-old woman with locomotor disability from Ahmednagar, Maharashtra: “I had gone to buy some ration, and there my crutches slipped. I fell down. In normal times, someone definitely used to come to pick me up if this sort of thing happened. But that day, no one came. Then when I took out my sanitizer from my purse and gave it to the shopkeeper, that is when he came to help me get up.” In both these anecdotes, an alternate model to the accepted ‘normal’ one would have changed the experiences. The second case is just one of the many incidents that illustrates what people with visual or locomotor disabilities face because of the deplorable condition of roads and the sheer negligence of authorities in India.

Another aspect that is often overlooked in the discourse on disability in India is the intersectionality between disability and caste and gender, which would be the primary focus of the following section of the article. While disabled people are already deprived of many premium choices available to all of us, taboos and belonging to a specific caste or gender can lead them to face double ostracization. 

Indian society is still heavily guided by superstitions and disability is seen as a manifestation of bad karma from the previous life of the individual. Naturally, people with disabilities are often ill-treated and excluded from auspicious occasions because it is believed that they are carriers of bad luck. This is more so in the case of rural areas or in lower-income families where primary importance is enjoyed by only those who can win bread for the family because these people live from hand to mouth. In these families where they struggle to make ends meet, disabled people are seen as useless and a liability. In a study conducted by an NGO, during a home visit, a father expressed that “ my elder son needs to take care of my younger son with polio, thus all the property of mine would go to my elder son and his children”. When asked why won’t he share his property equally with both his sons, he replied that ‘with his clutches he cannot do agricultural work and needs to depend on others, let that be my elder son’.  

The problem becomes even more complicated in the case of the Dalit community and women. While Dalit people are already excluded from attaining positions of power in the society and securing white-collar jobs, Dalits with disability are further shunned because firstly, they are deemed worthless owing to their inferior caste, and secondly, their disability excludes them from even the meagre jobs that Dalits are relegated to. A Dalit person with a locomotor disability might be given crutches but it loses its utility when the person is not even allowed to walk down a particular street and maybe drink water from a tap along the way. The irony here lies in the fact that the community has a higher number of people with disabilities, standing at 2.4%, owing to the fact that a major cause of disability lies behind the lack of proper nutrition and employment in highly hazardous jobs, like those in the firecracker industries. 

Because of caste-based and gender-based oppression still being prevalent in India, a Dalit woman often finds their place in the extreme bottom of the social hierarchy, since they face oppression from both the savarna community as well as the men of her own community. And a Dalit woman with disability has it worse since she is now shunned not just because of her caste and gender but also because she is apparently not as competent as her counterparts. I cannot but give a personal anecdote here of a maid who used to work at our house. Her daughter was suffering from some kind of disability which made walking difficult for her. After her marriage, when she fell sick her in-laws sent her back, because firstly, when she was married off her disability had not been disclosed, and secondly, because she was disabled, she was thought not to have any utility in the household. This is just one out of numerous such stories. Disabled women are often considered undesirable for marriage and if they are married a huge dowry goes behind that. These problems further double up in the case of disabled Dalit women who are ‘undesirable’ not just because of their disability but also because of their caste. They are considered fit neither for earning money nor for serving the household. Dalit women with disabilities are also at a greater risk of facing sexual violence. While women with disabilities often become prey to sexual violence, Dalit women from this category are worse off owing to them being subjected to sexual violence not just from their own communities but also from men of savarna communities. Cases like that of Joginder Singh v. the State of Haryana (1974), wherein the court refused to accept the testimonies of the eyewitnesses in the case of the rape victim suffering from chronic schizophrenia, don’t even make it to the court.

The problem lies in the fact that we are yet to adapt ourselves to the social model of disability, which sees disability as an impediment imposed by society and not a fault in a disabled person. Instead of arranging for a ramp, we wait till a person can be ‘cured’ to take the stairs. It is important that instead of the medical model, the social model is given precedence. For example, arranging for oral examinations for people with a visual impairment, or for texts to be written in braille in museums so that disabled people can also feel included. Another problem that ultimately leads to the complete avoidance of intersectionality with respect to disability in India is that while laws are made for people with disabilities and for the lower castes, none specifically speak of the intersection between the two. The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 was passed in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The law, while taking disabled women into account, ignores people from the lower castes in this context. A significant change, thus, is required in the country’s legislation as well as the prejudiced mindset of people if we really want opportunities to be accessible to disabled people. We might think enough has been done, but nuances in every sector need to be highlighted so that a real, all-inclusive change can be brought about.

Srija Dutta

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An undergraduate student of History at Presidency University, Kolkata and an enthusiast in social and cultural history, European History especially the Renaissance period, and gender studies.

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