Read the passage given below and answer the following questions:In India labels such as ‘disability’, ‘handicap’, ‘crippled’, ‘blind’ and ‘deaf’ are used synonymously. Often these terms are hurled at people as insults. In a culture that looks up to bodily ‘perfection’, all deviations from the ‘perfect body’ signify abnormality, defect and distortion. Labels such as bechara (poor thing) accentuate the victim status for the disabled person. The roots of such attitudes lie in the cultural conception that views an impaired body as a result of fate. Destiny is seen as the culprit, and disabled people are the victims. The common perception views disability an retribution for past karma (actions) from which there can be no reprieve. The dominant cultural construction in India therefore looks at disability as essentially a characteristic of the individual. The popular images in mythology portray the disabled in an extremely negative fashion.
The very term ‘disabled’ challenges each of these assumptions. Terms such as ‘mentally challenged’, ‘visually impaired’ and ‘physically impaired’ came to replace the more trite negative terms such as ‘retarded’ ‘crippled’ or ‘lame’. The disabled are rendered disabled not because they are biologically disabled but because society renders them so.
- Who form the disabled population in our country?
- Do you think disabled are rendered disabled not because they are biologically disabled but because society rendered them so? Explain.