Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the construction of the disability experience in mainstream Hindi cinema through an examination of three films, ;Black' (2005),'Taare Zameen Par'(2007) and 'My name is Khan'(2010)and attempts to show how global discourses of disablity intersect with local understandings,thus recasting the subject in new and interesting ways.These films shape and are shaped by changing understandings of disability and personhood in contemporary Indian society.

Paper long abstract:

The articulation of the 'social model' of disability and the flowering of Disability Studies resulted in exciting work in the humanities and social sciences on the disability experience and identity and the discourses underpinning them. Persons with disability have always found a place in the language of Hindi cinema, largely as peripheral characters whose impairments are the objects of pity or charity. However,the discourse has changed in recent years and stories centering around their lives and experiences are being told. The films taken up for discussion in this paper are 'Black' (2005), 'Taare Zameen Par' (2007) and 'My Name is Khan' (2010). 'Black' has as its theme the story of a young girl born blind and deaf and deprived of the opportunity to develop her 'human' faculties. This changes with the advent of a middle-aged male teacher who makes it his mission to 'make' her human. 'Taare Zameen Par' is a sensitively told tale of a boy with Dyslexia, whose 'hidden' disability is dismissed as indiscipline and inattentiveness by a social and educational system which privileges conformity and compliance. 'My Name is Khan' is a narrative of 'otherness' ; a Muslim man with Autism in post 9/11 America tries to make sense of a world that has changed forever. The paper attempts to map changing trajectories of disability discourse by deploying the anthropological concept of 'liminality'; the 'betwixt and between' threshold that challenges the notions of what it means to be 'human'.