Disability and the Indian Nation-State: Questions of Care and Recognition with with Shruti Vaidya

Lunch Provided

This presentation attempts to trace specific instantiations of care made by the Indian state with respect to its disabled citizens. First, Vaidya will be drawing attention to a state-authorized decision to perform hysterectomies on 11 mentally disabled women between the ages of 13 to 35 in a Government Certified school in Shirur, Maharashtra, India in February 1994. Secondly, Vaidya will focus on a contemporary example, with the current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, expressing his wish to shift the terminology used for disabled people, from Viklang, (disabled) to Divyang (divine) in 2016. This presentation will juxtapose these instances of state action and articulation with demands emerging from the disability rights movement.

Shruti Vaidya is a Ph.D. student at the department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. Vaidya is am interested in working on intersectional social movements with a focus on disability, deaf, and queer studies and activism.