From Medicalisation to Lived Reality: Disability in Contemporary Indian Poetry By Bhavya Sharma

“The Key Claim of any transnational approach is its central concern with movements, flows, and circulation.” -  Isabel Hofmeyr 

The idea of “transnationalism” is not just about crossing national borders geographically, rather it resorts to much broader approach of including circulation of ideas, experiences, identities, emotions, and cultural frameworks across different locations and histories. As Hofmeyr argues that “historical processes are not simply produced but rather constructed, “in the movement between places, sites and regions.” Such an overarching framework can be applied to disability itself, as it cannot be understood in its holistic sense as a medical category or fixed national narratives. Experiences or lived realities of disability move across cultures, institutions, literature, media, activism and academic discourse, reorganizing how societies understood the body, identity, normalcy, and exclusion. 

The course Introducing Critical Disability Studies: Indian Contexts, Global Perspectives, organized collaboratively by Disability Matters at the University of Sheffield and the Department of Psychology at the Kamala Nehru College, itself reinforces the idea that how disability is studied only through the lens of psychology, but the broader ramifications of it are mostly ignored and are still pending to be noted. The course creates a space where disability is examined not only within Indian Social realities but also within wider global discussions of ableism, inclusion, accessibility and identity. As a history student, engaging with this course provides me with a fantastic idea to examine the ‘history from below’ through a more nuanced perspective and also make it broader and inclusive in order to decode the lived experiences of those excluded by the society. This field is quite challenging but a blessing in disguise for someone intending to go beyond what has already being done to what still is waiting to be unfolded. Disability surely intersects with ideas such as that of transnational history, postcolonial studies, feminist discourse and social justice movements. Therefore, when studied through these frameworks disability can be analyzed in its holistic sense and can challenge conventional medical understandings of disability, in order to foreground lived experiences, mobility, exclusion, and social structures. 

This understanding of disability is further strengthened by Michael Oliver who argues that disability is much beyond ‘bodily deficiency’. According to him, it can be seen as a ‘Social Construct’, which is shaped by treating disabled bodies as abnormal, dependent, destitutes and separate from the imagined ideal of able-bodiedness. These ideas have become visible through the poems of Abhishek Anicca and Jyothsna Phanija. Their poetry delineates disability as a lived emotional, social and psychological reality. The poets reveal how disabled individuals negotiate loneliness, shame, exclusion and the burden of being ‘disable’ in the ‘abelist’ society. This construction can be understood through an example. In India, there are separate washrooms available for disabled people, they are treated in a special way through quotas and reservations, by the state. But, it’s crucial to understand that, all these instances, induce a sense of being “ different” from the society which is considered to be “Normal”( though it is not). This creates a sense of exclusion and low self –esteem among the disable people. Therefore, these sensibilities give birth to binaries like “able v/s disable”. 

The psychological dimensions of disability represented through the poems can also be connected with contemporary visual culture, particularly the character Anmol from the Netflix series ‘Mismatched’. As a wheelchair user participating in an app-development course, Anmol imagines digital and virtual spaces where he can exist to be what is considered as ‘ Normal’ human being. His Zombie- game concept reflects an internal battle of not being able to accept himself as a person with ‘disability’ but with tones of latent potential. Disability is not mentioned merely in terms of physical immobility , but it can also be shaped through social exclusion and the constant pressure to fit within the standards of normalcy. The way poems of Annica and Phanija, have shown that emotions can take the form of poems, in same way Anmol’s character demonstrates how disabled  individuals often resort to escape rooms through literary, imaginative, virtual technology, so to reclaim agency and a sense of collective belonging, who has remained inconsiderate towards them. 

Therefore, it has been argued that Disability should be placed within the matrix “what is lost and what ‘they’ get”, Loss in terms of what qualifies them to become disabled and get in terms of how they are perceived and shaped by the society, this duality is quite essential and is waiting to be recognized In order to create a more holistic sense of the so called “Disability”. The poems therefore become powerful sites of resistance where disabled voices reclaim identity, dignity and alternative ways of their existence gets recorded in the social setting. 

One of the central themes in these poems is the Social “Gaze”, i.e the way disabled bodies are constantly watched, noticed and objectified. In “representation”, Abhishek Annica writes, “why can’t we enter without a visa, why is our passport different”? The metaphor of visa is quite symbolic and broad which reflects that disabled people are the ones who are treated as outsiders for no reason and constantly need social approval. Similarly, in “cages”, the poet rejects pity- based reflections of disability through the lines, “I don’t want you to write a profile about me or inspire loads of people”. This is a quite significant critique of the way the society put these people on a pedestal, so to acquire inspirations from them, without addressing the actual exclusion. The social gaze becomes harsher in the lines “these eyes make me the star/ of some unknown showmanship,” where the disabled body become a spectacle for public to observe. This tendency can be further analyzed by looking at how disabled people are seen as ‘Divine’ or carrying divinity, which is further proved by the idea that “how they are sustaining there life like this? This must be difficult for them? May god give them strength”.These are some of the notions carried by the society, when they see any disable person around them. This is further reflected in “Returning the Gaze”, the line “I am the city of shame” reflects how social judgment creates internalized shame. 

In “The curse of Hephaestus” by Annica, “A man stood inside the mirror in my room, measuring corners of fat on my chest,” reveals body- image anxiety and self- surveillance. Similarly, the line “I prefer the beauty of the word unmade” shows an identification with incompleteness and emotional fragmentation. In “returning the gaze” the phrase “being vulnerable, being sexy, being foolish” challenges the assumption that disabled people cannot be romantic or carry sexual identities. This phrase objectifies disabled people as, they are shown or shaped like possessing nothing and rather crave for sense of belonging. 

In the poem “ Venus Has No wings”, blindness is represented through the metaphor of trapped wings, “ venus has no wings as they got stuck in her eyes”. Wings usually symbolize freedom, but being disable interrupts the movement and independence. Yet the poem, shows constant struggle to redefine identity in a  world structured around visual norms. Jyothsna Phanija’s poem “see” , the poet writes that “ I don’t see colours in smiles, I read the captions instead”. This line rejects vision as the only form of perception, but rather the emotions can be understood through language, sound, and feeling. Similarly, to make the argument sound, the line “voices, fragrences, love and sugary words don’t have colours” questions the society’s predominant obsession with visual experience. 

The poem also unfolds invisible labour involved in navigating the world without vision. Actions such as, “holding the gas lighter, watering plants “, become acts of accommodation and adaptation. Society often takes able bodied experiences to be a universal way to perform task, but through this poem it is evident that the same task can be done through alternative sensory realities, with the same precision with which able bodied persons perform them. 

Taken together these powerful poems of Abhishek Anicca and Jyothsna Phanija offer powerful critiques of “able society” by representing disability as a social, emotional and psychological experience rather than a medical condition. In this sense poets reclaim identity and resistance, which is seen in the everyday life of these people, in the form of accommodation and resistance. Their poetry exposes how society creates barriers through judgment, Janus faced normalization and exclusionary attitudes. Ultimately, these poems demand not sympathy, but empathy, recognition, dignity and equality. They force readers to rethink disability not as a personal weakness but a deep human experience shaped by social structures and cultural perceptions. 

To take a more optimistic view, the courses like these not only aim to induce critical thinking of disability, but also the exchange of the notions associated with these people across globe, which creates a more broader stance on the subject. Therefore, disable people should not be seen in terms of their disability, but as a person who everyday accommodates himself or herself not only to their idea of the self but also to the mould created by the society in which they have to fit themselves. When understood through this lens, disable people can transform to the identity of not “able people”, but to “people”. 

Reference

Bayly, C.A.,Sven Beckert, Matthew Connelly, Isabel Hofmeyr, Wendy Kozol, and Patricia Seed. “AHR Conversation: On Transnational History.” American Historical Review 111, no.5( December 2006): 1441-1464 

Oliver, Michael. The Politics of Disablement. London: Macmillan Education,1990.