Disabling Images

Anita Ghai, Reader in Psychology, Jesus & Mary College, University of Delhi, and a well know disability scholar and activist, gave a talk on Images of Disability in the Indian Media at the Equal Opportunity Cell (EOC) of the University of Delhi on 21^st October, 2009. She spoke for about 1:45 hrs and interacted with the students from the Media, Sign Language and ICT courses run at the Centre. Many of the students present were blind and Mamta, an employee of the DU Library who has been working with the EOC for sometime, is deaf. Hidam Gaurshyam, the EOC technician for the Hearing Impaired interpreted for Mamta. From the faculty, Rama Kant Agnihotri and I were present from Linguistics.

Terminology

Anita started with clarifying the terminology involved, especially the phrase ‘Disabled Person’ (DP) and ‘Persons with Disability’ (PwD), indicating the former as the preferred term for her. The movement at the University of Leeds was mentioned in this connection.

My own observation in this regard is the confusion in terminology being used and in practice in India, especially in official documentations, must be addressed. While we have the PwD Act of 1995, we have ‘Handicapped’ quota (VH, PH, etc.), ‘Visual Impairment’ (VI), we have ‘Parking for Disabled Persons’, etc. Among the public, ‘Handicapped’ is still the most commonly used term and using ‘Physically challenged’ is the ultimate sign of political correctness. In this milieu, the Social Model of disability is a relatively modern concept, and one, for which we have to keep sensitising the public at large.

Hindi Films of the 50s and 60s

Next, Anita, discussed chronologically the major examples, first from the Hindi movies, and then from the Hindi serials on the TV. Mother India, Boot Polish, Dosti are the movies of the 50s and 60s which looked at disability from the point of view of the Charity model. However, these films also scored the point that disability is not to be ashamed of and one needn’t beg for survival and rights. In this connection, characterisation of disability in the Mythologies was seen as interesting. Dhritrashtra (being blind), Manthara (a dwarf) and Shakuni (being lame) – all characters in Mahabharata, are dominantly portrayed as negative characters, disability being something to be afraid of, something negative.

In general, the ideal concept of human is the able bodied one, as far as the media is concerned. I raised the issue that in fact, it is more than that, the media actually considers the ‘perfect body’ as the bench-mark. Anita talked about the TAB or Temporarily Able Bodied, as being the most workable notion of the human body, for her.

Hindi Films of 70s to 90s

The major films in Hindi of the 70s through 90s that used some form disability as part of the main storyline, were Koshish (Deafness), Sparsh (Blindness) and also Upkaar and Sholey, to some extent. There were many other films -- and films continue to be made on this line --- where cure of the disability is used as a major theme or a turning point in the story. The film Shaan was also mentioned in this connection where Mazhar Khan characterises locomotive disability.

Hindi Films 2000 onwards

2000 onwards, we saw films like Black, Khamoshi, Tare Zamin Pe, Guru, KANK, Koi Mil Gayaa etc. that take up disability as part of the storyline. She criticised Black for the absolutely medieval teaching techniques shown to ‘educate’ the young Rani Mukherjee. I of course hated the film because of Amitabh Bacchan’s over the top hysterical acting (for which he even got an award!!) where the only goal seemed to drown every other voice in the film through his screaming. Dhritiman’s calm and controlled performance is a very clever way of exposing the vacuity of Amitabh’s histrionics. TZP, we both agreed was absolutely wrong-footed in showing how finally ‘competition’ mattered the most. Anita told us about the panicky phone-call of one of her friends whose son is dyslexic, right after the movie became popular, saying, ‘Anita, what will happen to my son, he can’t even paint’. Someone in the audience pointed out how KMG was v-e-r-y bad. Anita talked about Venkatesan and the case in the Supreme Court related to euthanasia, and her apprehensions of a movie being made on the theme.

Hindi TV Serials

Then she moved on to the Hindi serials on TV and mentioned Apki Antara, Jyoti and Baa Bahu aur Baby in this connection, where the dominant theme seems to be how to get out of disability. These programmes also reiterate how the dis-ability of the disabled is a curse through the characters and through events in the stories.

Popular Views of Disability

In fact, it was pointed out, how various themes like ‘laughter’, ‘charity, ‘hostility’, ‘cure’, keep coming back over the years. Most importantly, disability is used only as metaphor in the media, and understanding of disability takes a back seat. Very crucially also, disability is often equated with asexuality, chopping off Suparnakha’s nose in the Ramayana is, according to this thesis, desexualising her. The same way, Amitabh’s going away after kissing Rani Mukherjee is made to show guilt – as if disabled people are not entitled to desire.

Need of the hour

She appealed for a cautioned viewing of TV programmes and films from this renewed perspective and keeping the notion of deconstruction in mind while analysing these. I pointed out that it is important here to remember the activism issue involved, since a vacuous application of deconstruction may lead one to classify disability as another form of discrimination and to therefore imply that there is nothing special with disability. Anita too outlined the importance of activism in this context.

Future of the EOC

Today (20th Oct. 2009) we celebrated the 1st Anniversary of the establishment of the DU-NTPC Foundation ICT Training Centre at the Tutorial building of the central library of the University of Delhi where the VC, DU and manager (CSR), NTPC were also present. Here is a more or less full version of the brief talk that I gave there:

John Locke’s notion of the Circumstances of Justice followed up by Rawls in the 20^th Century established “justice” as a Social Contract. However, in this free, equal and independent world, people with physical or mental impairments were not included as “collaborators”, the tradition actually conflated the two questions, (i) By whom are the society’s basic principles designed, and (ii) For whom the society’s basic principles designed. In fact, we don’t even have to go that far back in time to understand this point, it is all around us today where we find trapped in a world designed by the majority for the majority; otherwise, why would we be forced to participate in, for example, the quintessential evaluation criterion of examination which are often held at inaccessible floors, where candidates are supposed to ‘write’ the exam, or where the candidates are forced to listen and respond to questions – all these are disabling environment created by the majority for the majority. This majority unknowingly, and sometimes knowingly, ignores a vast minority. Martha Nussbaum’s was a response to this conflation. I mention Nussbaum because of the strong India connection that she has in terms of her work on underprivileged women’s development and her collaboration with Amartya Sen. Anyhow, her position is clearly outlined in her mammoth work of 2006 entitled Frontiers of Justice, an important book which is stocked in the Central library here and can be consulted by anyone. Her position is know as the Capabilities Approach where she believes that instead of picturing ourselves as rough equals making a bargain, we would be better off thinking of one another as people with varying degrees of capacity and disability, in a variety of different relationships of interdependency with one another.

This is the vision at the base of an institution such as the EOC (Equal Opportunity Cell of the University of Delhi), which, apart from working for the disabled and other marginalised groups, also becomes a centre for dissemination of knowledge about our existence, about our social behaviour.

I want to emphasise that we do not lose track of this vision in our future ventures. For this reason, we have very carefully included, except in the English course, a module sensitizing students to issues of disability. In this connection, I may mention that Dr. Anita Ghai of the Jesus & Mary College will speak on the portrayal of disability in the media as a part of the course on Media that we have introduced this year; all of you are most welcome to attend the lecture here in this hall. Similarly, the Sign Language course has a compulsory unit on the myths surrounding the deaf and Sign language. ICT is anyway designed for the VI and we are thinking further on expanding this course to also include training for the deaf. It may be mentioned that the course which started off this flagship programme of the short-term courses at the EOC, the course on “Disability and Human Rights” that was conducted from Dec. 3, 2009 to April 2009, is the most crucial instrument to deliver this goal of working together to understand better the issues of the disabled. We are planning to run the second version of that course from January 2010 for five months, as well as an advanced level course on Sign Language.

Not losing sight of the vision outlined above is also important especially when the institution of democracy as we know it is undergoing a radical restructuring as fewer people vote, elections are often overturned or even rigged, political oligarchies and MNCs covertly rule countries and a homogenized ‘dominant’ culture is marketed world-wide, because it is my firm belief that institutions such as the EOC with a focussed goal and vision will contribute significantly to policy making and also towards the way we behave socially. That is a greater goal.