Invisibilizing the Sufferings – Law Schools’ Obliviousness to Persons with Disability (PwD)

[This Blog is part of A Conversation on Inclusivity Series]

Any inquiry into inclusivity axiomatically requires introspection. To truly understand and address exclusion, we need to look within and maybe, hold ourselves to the cruel mirror of ways in which we perpetuate exclusion and are complicit in marginalization. (For instance, how do we often contribute to systems that disadvantage others? What biases do we harbour, and how do they impact our interaction with others?)

Imagine walking into a college washroom (shared washrooms between faculty and students are a common setup in Indian higher educational spaces), only to be stirred by the voices of students using abusive language or engaging in conversations that aren't exactly palatable for educational spaces. Such incidents often left me in awkward positions.

I mentioned this discomfort to a faculty colleague, only to be told to use the faculty washroom. When I pointed out that we don't have designated faculty washrooms, his response was casual: "Oh, I meant the other washroom, the one for PwD. Faculties use that one only." This left me appalled. A part of me wanted to take refuge in the thought that it was an isolated event linked to the ‘casual ableism’ of a colleague (in simple words, Ableism is the belief that everyone should be able-bodied and able-minded. It treats people with disabilities as if they are not important, not fully human, or should be hidden. At the same time, being able-bodied is seen as the best, the normal, and what everyone is expected to be). But it turned out that it was a common practice across multiple floors of our law school. This widespread practice was primarily premised on the assumption that there are few, if any, PwD people in the Law School.

This assumption and disability erasure are, unfortunately, common in our society. Queries were asked recently in the Rajya Sabha regarding accessibility for PwDs in the legal profession, including a question from the Bar Council (the Regulatory Authority for Legal Education) regarding the number of disabled persons admitted to Law Schools. The response revealed a concerning lack of data, stating that they have “no specific data available with them regarding list of disabled persons admitted to each course, every year”. Law and Legal Education’s invisibilizations are not only restricted to questions of accessibility or reasonable accommodation but are also directed towards epistemic injustice against disability. There is a systematic erasure of disability education in law schools primarily owing to the absence of Disability Studies in course curriculum as well as conspicuous absence of disability literature in reading lists of law courses.

Normalization of such erasure gets accentuated in Indian civic society, wherein disability is often looked at as a consequence of one’s character, deeds, or even karma from the previous life. Dr V.K. Tiwari, law professor at NUJS laments in his paper –

In a nation, where femicide and feticide are realities in the hope of abled-bodied male offspring, the fear of a law enabling disabledcide is not a far fetched imagination

Sufferings exist! Ursula K. Le Guin wrote sensitively that “Suffering is the condition on which we live. And when it comes, you know it. You know it as the truth”, and yet, law’s apathetic gaze towards disability experience is a stark reminder of obscuring the sufferings because it disrupts our ableism.

Can we really think about the potential for inclusivity in law schools amidst this widespread apathy? The picture looks grim. There can never be societal justice without epistemic justice. Maybe, our Law Schools should start with the acknowledgement of UNCRPD’s Preambular recognition “that disability is an evolving concept and that disability results from the interaction between persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinders their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others,”. 

As Simone De Beauvoir epochally stated, “one is not born a woman, but rather, becomes a woman.” We need to reiterate that this idea can be recast in terms of disability as well (One is not born disabled, one becomes disabled).

As a departing thought, I will leave with a poignant excerpt from Robertson Burnet’s poem  about the social constructivist notion of disability – 

“Their [deaf] misfortune is not that they are deaf and dumb, but that others hear and speak. Were the established communication among men, by a language addressed, not to the ear, but to the eye, the present inferiority of the deaf would entirely vanish” (Burnet 1835).

Aditya Rawat is an Assistant Professor (SS) at UPES School of Law, Dehradun

[The opinions expressed herein are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University.]