‘Let’s not belittle the disabled with loose talk’

Ridiculing persons with disability for their bodily or intellectual differences has always been dispiriting, objectionable, and distasteful. And yet, as a society, we have passively tolerated and watched persons in responsible positions and power, as they disregarded all honourable and just forms of dissent and political debate in favour of repugnant attacks.
One such abhorrent incident has made me desolate, especially since greater appropriacy is expected from those nominated as people’s representatives: Radha Ravi’s vulgar and insensitive imitation of a person with disability.
To reinforce archaic symbolism in public and social discourse of a sort that hypersegregates is not just divisive, but further distances people, breeding a culture of separateness.
Radha Ravi is not solely culpable. Some of the elite from political and social spheres have fallen victim to this trend: Jairam Ramesh when he suggested that a scientist get admitted to Nimhans for treatment only because he asked him discomfiting questions on genetically modified crops in 2010; Anna Hazare during the Lok Pal protests in 2012 when he called Kapil Sibal ‘paagal’ etc.
One can’t but help feel affronted by collective social apathy and inaction in the light of these misdeeds and thoughtlessness. In this bleak scenario, though, one does see some shimmer of hope. I have recently witnessed many small villages in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam host persons with severe disabilities in their communities, ensuring social mixing and participation. Diversity in our social world shapes and expands our cultural view and behavior positively.
Fragmenting society based on endowments, capabilities or challenges has its pitfalls. We cannot forget that not too distant in the past, many persons who were considered different were torched and gassed to death. Eugenics was for real. We cannot delude ourselves into believing that how we conduct ourselves, especially as persons of prominence is inconsequential to others. On the contrary, it can have both fatal and negative, or progressive and supportive effects on human life.
Those who use phrases such as "retard" or "mentally sick" callously and consider it equivalent to an insult should remember that words are powerful. What may be said in jest or anger has immense potential to perpetuate stigma. Disability is not uni-dimensional and deficit-ridden or crippling. An equally potent narrative is that of people with disability whose genius is monumental. From the political sphere, Lincoln, Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Gandhi and more recently Norway’s Kjell Magne Bondevik, who crippled by depression could get out of bed only in bursts but worked effectively as a politician. With superior intuitive abilities, enhanced creativity, natural leadership abilities, and insight of a special sort, achievers with mental health issues are many, and in all walks of life. Let’s not devalue that account and substitute it with a quotidian one.
(The author is the co- founder of The Banyan and BALM and professor, TISS)