ABSTRACT
This chapter engages with the cultural space of disability as one that engenders questions of identity within the ambivalent structures of social reintegration in colonial India. By arguing for a complex, Indigenous interest in the colonial processes of education and rehabilitation of persons with disabilities, this chapter traces the archival presence of establishments such as the Calcutta Blind School, the Calcutta Deaf and Dumb School and Light House for the Blind, as well as engage with the writings of people such as Subodh Chandra Roy, A. K. Shah and Kalidas Bhattacharya. It can be argued that forms of disability resistance in post-independent India trace their ideological moorings to imaginations of solidarity and community that emerged in these locations. Extending the argument, this chapter will also study the political conceptions of disability resistance through organised movements in post-Independent India. Finally, we examine the cultural site of special schools as engendering a consciousness of disruption and transgression through an examination of two cinematic representations of the same, namely the Hindi language film Sparsh (1980) and the Bengali language film Wheel Chair (1994).
