Jankriti International Magazine/ जनकृसत अंतरराष्ट्रीय पसिका
बाल- सिमिक / Child Discourse
A Report on “Motherhood experience of
disabled child”
Garima
Disability as a subject is less talked about and
engaged. In twentieth century, Adolf Hitler
initiated a “euthanasia” program which was
about mass killing of the disabled population
who were not “economic worthy”. Earlier a lot
of money has been spent on medical treatment
of disabled person in order to make them abled
or normal. But with the passage of time, the
belief about the word disability emerged
particularly after World War II when a large
number of soldiers who came back home with
some kind of disability. In the West, disability
movement emerged in 1950s however in India,
it started in 1970s. Before all this there was a
very pathetic treatment of disabled people.
They were not treated as “equal Humans”.
In our daily life, we encounter many disabled
people and most of the time, it is not very
shocking for us to see them outside the metro
station or outside the temple begging and
sometimes we see them on road side which
sometimes takes or does not take our attention
towards them. In India, out of one billion
population, around seventy million are disabled
people (Ghai, 2002:50). Nevertheless, because
of lack of awareness they rarely get the proper
treatment of it. At the same time, there is lack
of communication or education resources for
the disabled community as she pointed out there
is only one “televised sign language news
bulletin per week for people with hearing
impairment” (p.g. 103). Some disability right
activists do not take into the account the
question of social location as they take the
Vol. 3 , issue 27-29, July-September 2017.
ISSN: 2454-2725
Western concept to understand the disability as
a singular identity. However, in Indian context,
disabled person does not consist with one
specific identity but they are oppressed on
multiple levels such as caste, gender, class and
social location. At the same time, religious
conception is too entrenched with the concept
of disability. If we talk ab out India here many
people have a lot of religious faith. There are
also people who have superstitious belief about
disability. There is also some kind of notion
among people who think that the person having
some kind of disability has committed sin in
their previous lives. It has been attached to the
idea that the God has given them punishment
for their previous life’s sins. Disabled
movement has limited itself to few agendas
such as demanded for their equal rights and
equal opportunities in work places, in education
and so on. Even, the disability right movement
demanded to change the word disability into
differently abled. At the same time, we also
need to understand that because of lack of
institutions as well as awareness, a lot of
families do not able to get the proper treatment
or education of their kids where it still comes as
disability.
The purpose of my research is to understand
how the motherhood experience of a disabled
child is different from the motherhood
experience of an abled child. I have talked to
four mothers. Two mothers whose children
have some kind of disability and other two
mothers have their abled children. I have further
specified that I will talk to those mothers whose
children age is from 1 to 10 years only. For
methodology, I have employed is ethnographic
study. I took all my interviews within four days.
I did my field work in afternoon time assuming
that it may be a little relaxing time for married
women particularly. To conduct this interview,
I have used the semi-structured questionnaire
format as research methodology. I began my
interview with the question of daily routine of
all the four mothers.
वर्ष 3, अंक 27-29 जुलाई-सितंबर 2017