SENSORY IMPAIRMENTS AND CINEMA IN INDIA
By Joyojeet Pal
Studies of disability in India show widely prevalent views of disabilities as being deserved as a result of some action attributable to a previous life, or a sin of another life, even among the disabled themselves. To understand how such beliefs are held and reinforced in modern-day India, we examine the portrayal of the disabled in Indian cinema to document ways in which ideas about disability may be reinforced by popular media. This article studies the portrayal of disability in Indian cinema from the early talkie era to contemporary cineplex blockbusters. We begin by relating popular cinema against the depiction of disability in Hindu mythology with characters such as Dhritarashtra, Ashtavakra, Manthara, Surpanakha and Shravan and find much resonance of these with some of the typecast representations in Indian cinema. The article argues that the stereotyping of disability has been done in a few important ways, and citing over 200 examples primarily from Hindi and Tamil cinema, we examine these in detail
