Social Practices and Disability: Historical Stigma and Modern Challenges

How a society treats its most vulnerable members reveals the depth of its values. For persons with disabilities (PWDs) in India, that treatment has historically oscillated between reverence and rejection – shaped by mythological narratives, religious beliefs, economic realities, and, more recently, legal frameworks designed to level the playing field. Yet the gap between law and lived experience remains wide. Understanding how social practices around disability have evolved – and where they still fall short – is essential to building a genuinely inclusive society.

Historical marginalization of persons with disabilities in India 🔗

India’s relationship with disability stretches back thousands of years, deeply embedded in its literary and religious traditions. The earliest model of disability in Indian culture was rooted in the philosophy of karma – the idea that physical impairment was a consequence of sins committed in a previous life. Research published in the Christian Journal for Global Health notes that historically, karmic beliefs advanced the view that people with disabilities were deserving of their condition, a perception that continues to fuel stigmatization even today.

This belief system left a significant imprint on classical Indian epics, which were both mirrors and makers of social attitudes. A 2024 analysis of disability representation in the Mahabharata found that characters like Dhritarashtra, Shakuni, and Karna had their disabilities portrayed as symptoms of moral or intellectual deficiency – framing that fed directly into stigma and social marginalization. Researchers studying karmic philosophy and disability in ancient India note that hunchbacked Manthara from the Ramayana and limping Shakuni from the Mahabharata became household synonyms for villainy, with the motivations behind their actions rarely given thoughtful examination.

It is worth noting, however, that these epics also contain counter-narratives. Some scholars highlight that figures like Ashtavakra – a sage with severe physical deformities who commanded intellectual respect – and the deity Lord Jagannath, worshipped without limbs, offer evidence that disability was not uniformly condemned. Scholars argue that the positive behavior of society can be strengthened through a proper understanding of these epics, which can help curb the stigma around disability. The problem lies in which narratives gained cultural dominance – and the “evil cripple” trope proved far more socially sticky than the sage-who-transcends-his-body trope.

Karma, stigma, and social exclusion 🔗

At the profound level, Indian mythology believes in the philosophy of divine justice, and disability is perceived to be the punishment for the sins of a previous birth. At the mundane level, it is viewed as something undesirable and inauspicious, which ultimately leads to social marginalization. This double framing – spiritual punishment and everyday inauspiciousness – meant that PWDs were excluded not only from social participation but sometimes even from religious spaces. Research under the Coalition for Religious Equality and Inclusive Development found that people with disabilities experienced marginalization due to both attitudinal and physical barriers, including being excluded from practicing their religion by religious leaders or members of the congregation. The stigma was so normalized that, as the same research found, some participants with disabilities had become so accustomed to being marginalized that they began to exclude themselves, anticipating rejection before it even occurred.

Modern legal frameworks: the RPWD Act and the DDRS 🔗

The legal architecture around disability rights in India has undergone a significant transformation in the past decade. India signed and ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) in 2007, which mandated changes to national law to eliminate obstacles and barriers to full participation. This led to the enactment of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPWD) Act, 2016, which replaced the older and more limited PWD Act of 1995.

The RPWD Act, 2016, expanded the types of recognized disabilities from 7 to 21, with the Central Government retaining the power to add more. New categories included speech and language disability, specific learning disability, acid attack victims, dwarfism, and muscular dystrophy, among others. The Act also raised the reservation of government vacancies for persons with benchmark disabilities from 3% to 4%, mandated barrier-free infrastructure in public buildings, and established special courts in each district to handle violations. The Office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities notes that the Act provides for a three-tier arrangement covering policy evolution, implementation, and grievance redressal – a structure designed to ensure accountability at every level.

The Deendayal Disabled Rehabilitation Scheme (DDRS) 🔗

Complementing the legal framework is the Deendayal Disabled Rehabilitation Scheme (DDRS), a centrally-sponsored initiative under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. According to the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD), DDRS provides grant-in-aid to NGOs for rehabilitation projects aimed at enabling PWDs to attain and maintain their optimal physical, sensory, intellectual, and socio-functional levels. Its objectives include creating an enabling environment for equal opportunities, equity, social justice, and empowerment of persons with disabilities. The scheme covers services ranging from special schools and vocational training centres to early intervention programs and community-based rehabilitation – with a clear thrust toward mainstreaming PWDs into regular educational and social settings.

Gaps between law and reality 🔗

Despite these legal and policy advances, implementation remains the critical weak link. As noted in the RPWD Act handbook, a law is only as good as its implementation. Many PWDs still face administrative hurdles in accessing basic entitlements. In several instances, temporary disability certificates have not been honored by concerned administrators, and patients have been denied their rights – a problem rooted in administrators’ lack of awareness of the Act’s provisions. The reality for many PWDs, especially in rural India, is that legal protections exist on paper but rarely translate into material change in daily life.

Barriers to inclusion: physical, communication, and attitudinal 🔗

Exclusion of PWDs is rarely the result of a single barrier. It is the cumulative effect of multiple overlapping obstacles. People with disabilities often face significant barriers to participating fully in society, including physical barriers such as inaccessible buildings, communication barriers such as the lack of sign language interpreters, and attitudinal barriers such as prejudice and ignorance.

Physical infrastructure in India continues to fall short of accessibility standards. The Accessible India Campaign (Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan), launched in 2015 with the goal of making public spaces, transport, and digital platforms accessible, has shown limited results on the ground. Disability rights advocates point out that despite the publicity around the campaign, progress has been extremely slow and uneven, with very little structural change actually achieved.

Attitudinal barriers may, in fact, be the hardest to dismantle. A person with a disability who is stigmatized because of societal attitudes is more likely to experience anxiety and frustration than a non-stigmatized person. With constant negative attitudes, levels of anxiety may reach beyond the coping capacity of the person with a disability, potentially resulting in aggression or withdrawal. Due to negative societal perceptions, PWDs tend to focus more on their disabilities than their abilities, which makes them feel more vulnerable.

Studies report that people with disabilities in rural areas are largely excluded from mainstream poverty alleviation programmes due to attitudinal and physical barriers. In education, ninety percent of India’s children with disabilities reside in rural areas where even non-disabled children find access to education difficult, and the lack of accessible transportation pushes children with disabilities further to the margins.

Gender disparities: the double burden of discrimination 🔗

When disability intersects with gender, the challenges compound significantly. Women with disabilities in India do not face a singular form of disadvantage – they navigate a complex web of structural, cultural, and economic barriers simultaneously.

Women with disabilities are particularly marginalized and face societal challenges relating to both disability and gender – a reality researchers have described as a double burden of discrimination. Marginalization is further compounded for those who belong to minority religions or lower castes. In practical terms, this plays out in employment, education, and bodily autonomy.

Only 23 percent of disabled women are employed, compared to 47 percent of disabled men. Employment schemes and accessibility campaigns have not been gender-sensitive enough to address the layered barriers disabled women face – including unsafe transport, inaccessible healthcare, and restrictions imposed by families rooted in patriarchal expectations. Traditional gender roles expect women to take care of households and manage family responsibilities. When a woman has a disability, these expectations become barriers, as many people assume she cannot fulfill these roles.

Research empirically validates that women and girls with disabilities are victims of intersectional discrimination in India, with being a woman posing further difficulties in educational opportunities and attainment. In certain communities, the situation becomes even more complex: parents often have to pay larger dowries to marry off daughters with disabilities, and such women may be married to disabled men or men of lower social status – reducing their agency and reinforcing their dependent status.

Why intersectionality matters in disability policy 🔗

An intersectional approach to disability recognizes that a person’s experience is shaped not by disability alone, but by the simultaneous interaction of gender, caste, class, religion, and geography. Many intersecting factors such as caste, class, gender, religion, and region give rise to a very diverse understanding of disability in India – one that cannot be addressed through a single-axis policy framework. A Dalit woman with a locomotor disability in a rural setting faces a fundamentally different set of barriers than an upper-caste urban man with the same impairment. Policies that fail to account for this complexity will inevitably leave the most marginalized behind. Legal scholars at the London School of Economics have noted that while the RPWD Act, 2016, does recognize women and children with disabilities as a special class requiring additional protection, there remains a significant absence of provisions addressing the needs of gender-nonconforming and transgender persons with disabilities.

Steps toward genuine inclusion 🔗

Changing deeply ingrained social practices requires action at multiple levels – legislative, institutional, and cultural. The legal foundation is in place; what is needed now is sustained implementation, public education, and structural reform.

Inclusive education is among the most powerful levers for long-term change. When children with and without disabilities learn together from an early age, it normalizes difference and builds empathy. The RPWD Act mandates free education for children with disabilities between the ages of 6 and 18, and the DDRS supports early intervention centers specifically designed to transition children with disabilities into mainstream schooling. The ultimate objective of special schools, as articulated in DDRS guidelines, should ideally be to move toward the inclusion of students with disabilities in regular schools, facilitating their integration with the mainstream.

Employment and economic inclusion are equally critical. Meaningful participation in the workforce not only provides financial independence but also reshapes social perceptions of competence and worth. The RPWD Act’s reservation of 4% of government posts for persons with benchmark disabilities is a step forward, but private sector accountability remains limited. Stronger enforcement mechanisms and incentives for private employers are needed to translate policy intent into practice.

Awareness and sensitization campaigns must go beyond generic messaging. They need to specifically target communities, educators, healthcare workers, and employers to address attitudinal barriers – which, as research consistently shows, are often more disabling than physical impairments themselves. Importantly, these campaigns must incorporate gender and caste lenses to reach the most marginalized PWDs effectively.

Accessibility by design – building infrastructure, transportation systems, digital platforms, and public services that are usable by everyone by default – must become a non-negotiable standard rather than an afterthought. The RPWD Act’s provisions on universal design and barrier-free environments provide the legal basis; rigorous enforcement and accountability are what remain elusive.

The trajectory is clear: India has moved from viewing disability through the lens of karma and charity to recognizing it as a rights issue. But the distance between a rights-based framework on paper and a rights-respecting society in practice is still considerable. Closing that gap requires not just better laws, but a sustained cultural shift in how disability is understood, discussed, and responded to – at every level of society.

What do you think? Given that attitudinal barriers are often cited as more disabling than physical ones, what role should schools and media play in reshaping public perceptions of disability in India? And with women with disabilities facing a documented double burden of discrimination, how should disability policies be redesigned to reflect the realities of those at the intersection of multiple marginalizations?

References

1. https://cjgh.org/articles/10.15566/cjgh.v6i2.250
2. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/382597106_Problematic_Representation_of_People_with_Disabilities_in_the_Epic_Mahabharata
3. https://www.shanlaxjournals.in/journals/index.php/sijash/article/view/531
4. https://www.robobionics.in/blog/disability-in-indian-culture-traditional-beliefs-vs-modern-perspectives/
5. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6482682/
6. https://ccpd.nic.in/acts-guidelines/
7. https://depwd.gov.in/en/ddrs/
8. https://thefederal.com/category/health/disability-rights-accessibility-india-inclusive-progress-219367
9. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/humanrights/2023/08/03/disability-rights-and-gender-inclusivity-why-the-indian-government-should-revisit-their-disability-policies/