Disability on the Move: Disabled Mobilities in Contemporary India

Abstract

In this chapter, we explore multiple constellations of disability to challenge the binary opposition drawn between stasis and mobility, and to document the complex ways in which the two are entangled. We draw on multi-sited fieldwork with people affected by leprosy in coastal South India; Indian Sign Language (ISL)-speaking deaf young adults in urban locations across India; and others identified by themselves or others as disabled in Hyderabad, to document the journeys—for treatment, education, work, and activism—taken by disabled people across their life courses. While these movements should not be conflated with progress, we argue, they do create particular creative opportunities for people to transcend identities and life projects and to forge new ones that are not always open to their nondisabled peers.