Disability in India and What You Can Do About It — Part 5: Religion and Society
Audio transcription available here: https://soundcloud.com/user-442818167/disability-in-india-pt-5
Part 5: Indian society and religion on disability
Religion (Hinduism) plays a huge role in Indian society, a role that strongly influences the country’s perception of disability
The factors that influence Indians’ views of disability come from a complicated cultural fabric. Untangling this fabric and separating its religious, social, and political threads would entail a Herculean effort requiring several volumes of text; for the sake of this project, we will briefly examine the swatch of this fabric most relevant to contemporary views on disability — Hinduism. Hinduism, the religion that 80% of Indians adhere to, is a massive religion, with a vast pantheon of over 33 million Gods, a gigantic mythology, and a base of followers to match. One could argue for any number of Hindu perspectives on disability, each grounded in a different story from the mythology that might be at odds with another.
There is one tenet of Hinduism, however, that more clearly explains a coherent view of disability than an examination of the mythology: most Hindus believe in the concept of Karma, whereby good deeds and virtuous behavior reward an individual with a good lot in their current or future lives. Similarly, bad deeds and amoral conduct result in misfortune in current and/or future lives. It is a common Hindu belief that sinning in a previous life results in one’s reincarnation with a disability. For many Hindus, disability is a form of karmic justice, the purely negative and “deserved” consequence of the negative karma accumulated in a past life. Disabled Indians in especially religious communities are often the subject of denigration, as they are seen as the perpetrators of terrible acts in a previous life, a source of shame to their families.
It is important to note that the concept of Karma is not universally negative in its application to disability — Karma is also a force for good for some disabled Indians. Several studies have found that Hindus with disabilities often use Karma to come to terms with and validate their disabilities. Many use Karma as a way to cope with conditions they find to be unfortunate, accepting those conditions as a result of Karmic law and moving on from them. Additionally, Karma is immutable — one can inherit a poor lot in life due to negative Karma but may work to perform good deeds and reverse their Karmic status. This prompts many Hindus to attempt to act virtuously in order to mitigate what they perceive as the negative effects of bad Karma.
There are, in addition, several non-Karmic ways in which Hinduism interacts with disability. Just as each Christian might interpret the Bible differently, each Hindu will apply their teachings to disability differently. Hinduism’s encouragement of modesty and the surrender of one’s own will to God might, for example, prompt one to hide their disability and confide only in God rather than their family, friends or support groups. Many disabled Hindus have acknowledged hiding their disability for most of their lives, in the hope that God will absolve them for their devotion, piety, and modesty. Each of the millions of Hindus across India and the world knows Hinduism differently and will apply their knowledge of Hinduism to disability differently, whether the outcome is empowering or harmful for disabled individuals.
The manifold ways in which the 280 million non-Hindus in India treat disability in accordance with their religious beliefs, or lack thereof, are of equal importance in a comprehensive examination of disability in India. Many Eastern religions describe a concept similar to that of Karma — Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains all have versions of the Karmic law that function in manners similar to their Hindu counterpart. Islam, the most populous minority religion in India, Christianity, and other religions endorse different views of disability that are each up for interpretation. For the sake of brevity, however, this project will leave the analysis of other religious attitudes to disability to other, more detailed papers (for more on other religious attitudes to disability, see the Works Cited page). Despite the existence of hundreds of millions of non-Hindus in India and the differences in Hindu practice, Hinduism is the single dominant cultural, political, and social force, such that the attitudes identified above are relatively common and generally accepted.
