A few years ago, Rename Sarkar took a perfectly serviceable 'National Law Day' and rechristened it 'Constitution Day'. No, damage done, so let's get the mandatories out of the way. Greetings of Constitution Day.
Those of you who follow my posts here, may have spotted some on my work as a writer of exams for visually handicapped children. This work took a big turn when, in 2021, I started helping a blind PhD student with work on his research, which segued earlier this year into helping him edit his thesis. He submitted his doctoral dissertation on October 31 and almost immediately after that, his roommate, also blind, also a PhD candidate, reached out, and I am now assisting him with editing his thesis.
Manoj, for that is his name, is a thinker. His chatty, friendly demeanour scarcely lets it on, but his cheerfulness conceals a contemplative mind. He's a PhD student in Sociology, so his reading, particularly of Philosophy, Social Psychology, Sociology and Anthropology is of course prolific. To this, add empathy, which comes so much more naturally to people of disability, since they experience physical, and emotional, bruising so often, and you have a person who is able to abstract broad verities from narrow personal experiences.
This ability is well known to his peers and teachers at his institution, so they've invited him to give a keynote speech at a 'Constitution Day' event on campus, later today. Yesterday, he decided to rehearse his material with me. And it was so good, it warrants this post. Read everything below this para as if it were Manoj speaking to you.
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Warm felicitations of Constitution Day!
A few years ago, Rename Sarkar took a perfectly serviceable 'National Law Day' and rechristened it 'Constitution Day'. No, damage done, so let's get the mandatories out of the way. Greetings of Constitution Day.
Those of you who follow my posts here, may have spotted some on my work as a writer of exams for visually handicapped children. This work took a big turn when, in 2021, I started helping a blind PhD student with work on his research, which segued earlier this year into helping him edit his thesis. He submitted his doctoral dissertation on October 31 and almost immediately after that, his roommate, also blind, also a PhD candidate, reached out, and I am now assisting him with editing his thesis.
Manoj, for that is his name, is a thinker. His chatty, friendly demeanour scarcely lets it on, but his cheerfulness conceals a contemplative mind. He's a PhD student in Sociology, so his reading, particularly of Philosophy, Social Psychology, Sociology and Anthropology is of course prolific. To this, add empathy, which comes so much more naturally to people of disability, since they experience physical, and emotional, bruising so often, and you have a person who is able to abstract broad verities from narrow personal experiences.
This ability is well known to his peers and teachers at his institution, so they've invited him to give a keynote speech at a 'Constitution Day' event on campus, later today. Yesterday, he decided to rehearse his material with me. And it was so good, it warrants this post. Read everything below this para as if it were Manoj speaking to you.
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Warm felicitations of Constitution Day!
I will speak to you today about the unique relationship that People Of Disability have with the Constitution of India. There are three parts to my speech: a brief look at the historical status of the handicapped in India; a review of how the Constitution addressed PoDs; and what remains to be done, to enable PoDs to live lives of value and dignity in times to come.
A vast majority of the human race is fortunate to be born and grow to adulthood without significant handicap. Most people have access to sight, sound and speech, a normally wired brain, and a complete set of limbs, bones and muscles to grant them unrestricted mobility in both the physical and mental spheres. A tiny minority, though, is deprived of one or more of these faculties, at birth, or at some point thereafter. This is my cohort, the People of Disability.
When kids with congenital deformities or disabilities were born in the past, they caused consternation, fear and sorrow. Their families had no explanation for why this misfortune had visited them. So they turned to the priesthood: the ojha, purohit, shaman, maulvi, padre, rabbi or witch-doctor, because, after all, who could know the arcane ways of the divine, and the destined, better than those who thrived on peddling exactly that myth? This 'wise' person leaned into something which could be readily understood by common people, as it was a part of their everyday lives, except, they gave it a mystical, and completely unverifiable twist. The handicap, they said, was, a punishment, either for misdeeds that this infant had committed in her or his previous life. Or it was a test of the parents' faith in the benevolence of their, supposedly beneficent, god. Job of the Old Testament of the Bible, Dhritarashtra of the Mahabharat or Ashtavakra of the Puranas all suffered, either because they were being thus tested or punished.
Our ancestors came up with a supposedly immutable law of Karma, a virtue and vice book of account which runs from one lifetime to the next ad infinitum. Nobody has seen any evidence of rebirth, nor of the accounting, and nobody can say who keeps the score on countless lifeforms, but in the face of incomprehension, even this sort of contrived fabrication, albeit delivered with certitude, is better than nothing. Did these doctrines of punishment and test limit themselves to physical disability? Far from it. The priesthood used exactly the same phony framework to explain social and economic disability too. So you were born to a lower caste? Your past lives. You were born dirt-poor? God was testing you.
Time passed and science progressed. Remedies became available for debilities and prostheses helped people live fuller lives. Science and the Scientific Temper became mainstream, and the old ways of understanding disability began to be discredited.
This was the social and intellectual context in which Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, a true 'mahapurush', whose encyclopedic grasp of Science and Rationality was paired to an impeccable understanding of Law and Justice, began working on the gigantic task of writing our Constitution. Born to a Dalit family, Babasaheb knew from personal experience what the degradation, humiliation, privation and squalor which was, unfortunately still is, the shared lot of millions at the bottom of the caste hierarchy. The invocations of Justice, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, which begin in the Preamble, and continue throughout the Constitution, speak loudly and clearly to someone like me. My handicap ought not stand in the way of being able to secure Justice, social economic and political. My handicap should not limit my Liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship. My handicap should not deprive me Equality of status and opportunity. And my disability must never cause me to be excluded from the Fraternity which assures the dignity of every individual and the unity and integrity of India.
It ought not to. But it does.
Today marks 74 years since the Constituent Assembly adopted the Constitution, or the 75th Law/Constitution Day. One might think, three-quarters of a century is long enough a time-span for completely embracing and manifesting the soaring, ambitious vision which the Constitution enshrines.
It isn't. Why not? And this is the third and final part of what I want to say to you today.
You have so far heard it from my unique perspective as a person of disability. Let me turn this around and make you aware of yours. Yes, you who have all your senses in excellent working order. You, who just ran the Navy Marathon. You, who spends hours toning their abs into the perfect 6-pack. You, who chefs at the city's fanciest restaurant. And almost all the rest of you too, barring the handful of people like me scattered across this room.
You are blind to the struggles of the blind. You are deaf to the challenges of the hearing impaired. You are mute when issues of justice for the handicapped, whatever be the handicap, not only physical, need you to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.
We know where we fall short, and work hard to live as-close-to-full-as-possible lives, despite our disabilities.
You, though...
