ABSTRACT
The present chapter deals with the realities of those who experience multiple levels of systemic exclusion from the core institutions of contemporary society, in particular education, employment, family life, parenting and the built environment, gender, caste, and class. It also emphasizes the need to not only understand these realities but also that through oppression characteristics disabled lives; the possibility of resistance is very clearly evident. Further, the disabled people experience exclusion not only in other social movements because of stigma attached to disability as well as the invisibility of their disabled lives. It is, thus, important that the disability movement does not exclude or marginalize the disabled people whose experience of disability is often exacerbated by the interactions of other forms of oppression. That the understanding of disability needs to take into account the oppressive nature of society is illustrated by focusing on the gendered nature of disability in detail. The chapter concludes by evaluating the politics of the disability movement in India. Disability both for men and women in the Indian context is not a singular marker. It has to be positioned in multiple contexts, which contain many other markers of difference and inequality such as poverty, caste and class. Within India (and worldwide), generalizations have been made for understanding disability. Consequently, meta-historical narratives have been created which tend to exclude important features of disabled people’s lives and of their knowledge. Within India as in the western world, people who are discriminated on the basis of disability often experience other levels of marginalization such as that of class, gender, poverty, and rural–urban divide. In this chapter I make an attempt to present these realities. Though the vantage point is India; the realities will reflect a universal character of disability.
