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Movement of the Organized Blind in India: from Passive Recipients of Services to Active Advocates of Their Rights

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Movement of the Organized Blind in India: from Passive Recipients of Services to Active Advocates of Their Rights Syracuse University SURFACE Cultural Foundations of Education - Dissertations & Theses School of Education 12-2011 Movement of the Organized Blind in India: From Passive Recipients of Services to Active Advocates of Their Rights Jagdish Chander Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/cfe_etd Part of the Special Education and Teaching Commons Recommended Citation Chander, Jagdish, "Movement of the Organized Blind in India: From Passive Recipients of Services to Active Advocates of Their Rights" (2011). Cultural Foundations of Education - Dissertations & Theses. 50. https://surface.syr.edu/cfe_etd/50 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Education at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Cultural Foundations of Education - Dissertations & Theses by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract In recent years, the subject of the newborn disability rights movement in India has been attracting the attention of researchers, but there has been very little effort to document the movement of blind people in India for their rights, which preceded the broader disability rights movement. I therefore conducted a qualitative study of this movement of blind people in India by using the methods of oral history and document analysis. For this purpose, I conducted 93 interviews (by interviewing 45 informants) and analyzed relevant documents. Borrowing terminology from the self-advocacy movement of the blind in the United States, I describe this movement as a “movement of the Organized Blind,” which was launched when blind activists began to organize themselves at the national level in India during the early 1970s. I have attempted to explain that since the launching of this movement, blind activists have been constantly engaged in a struggle for their rights, which encompasses a wide range of issues from the right to employment to the enactment and implementation of the comprehensive disability rights law. I describe the historical evolution of this movement as a process of transformation of the status of blind people in India from being “passive recipients of services” offered to them through the service delivery organizations to “active advocates of their rights.” I have classified the evolution of this movement into four stages from 1970 to 2005. I also reject the existing views about the time of origin of the disability rights movement in India and establish my argument that it began in late 1980s when blind activists began to focus on the demand for the enactment of a comprehensive disability rights law, which resulted in the enactment of such a law in 1995. Finally, I have analyzed the changing methods of advocacy as well as the shift in the approach of the service delivery organizations in the field of blindness in India from outright rejection of the advocacy approach to its acceptance in the post-1995 period. MOVEMENT OF THE ORGANIZED BLIND IN INDIA: FROM PASSIVE RECIPIENTS OF SERVICES TO ACTIVE ADVOCATES OF THEIR RIGHTS. By Jagdish Chander Master of Philosophy, University of Delhi, 1995 Dissertation Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Cultural Foundations of Education in the Graduate School of Syracuse University December 2011 Copyright 2011 Jagdish Chander All rights Reserved iv Acknowledgments The accomplishment of the goal of completing my doctoral studies and, in particular, the writing of this dissertation involved a long process and it would not have been possible to attain this goal without the support of numerous people during the time span of almost a decade. An opportunity to interact with Syracuse University faculty and students in the fall of 2000 enabled me to learn about the doctoral program in Disability Studies at Syracuse University, and I began the pursuit of my doctoral studies in the Fall of 2001. Since then, my association with a number of people at SU has provided me with an enriching experience that has made an immense contribution to my intellectual growth and enabled me to be a more humane and confident person. Pursuing studies at the doctoral level in the United States is not an easy task, perhaps for anyone, but it has been all the more challenging for me as an international student who also happens to be blind. It would have been very difficult for me to have successfully completed this task without the persistent support of several friends in India and the United States as well as faculty and colleagues at SU. I have deep gratitude for all these people who enabled me to complete the journey to my Ph.D. There are too many to be listed, but at the same time I do want to acknowledge the support of at least a few of them. In retrospect, it would have been impossible to have completed my doctoral studies without the immense support of several faculty members at SU, particular Professor Steven J. Taylor, Professor Douglas P. Biklen, Professor Susan S. Wadley, and Professor Arlene S. Kanter. They have been not only mentors, but good friends who contributed significantly to my personal and intellectual growth since I arrived at SU. I cannot imagine completing my studies without financial support from the Center on Human Policy and the SU Graduate School v Fellowship. Similarly, it would not have been possible for me to spend a year in India collecting the data for my research without securing the American Institute of Indian Studies Fellowship. I am very grateful for the assistance and support from Steve and Sue in obtaining this financial assistance. I do not have words to express my gratitude for Doug and Arlene, without whose mentorship and constant support, it would have been impossible to complete my studies. Doug was very kind to have accepted me as his advisee and continuously extended his support in guiding me throughout my studies and has always been extremely prompt in dealing with the paper work whenever needed. At the same time, Arlene has always been very supportive in my studies and provided introductions to key people who enriched my professional growth. Support from all of these faculty members has had a transforming impact on my personality as a whole, and, if at all, I have grown as a better human being and an intellectually sound person, it is to be primarily attributed to this support and mentorship in my life during the time spent at SU. Along with the faculty, I owe a great deal of gratitude toward several colleagues at SU, particularly those at the Center on Human Policy, the School of Education and the Office of Disability Services. The list of such people runs into double digits, but I must express my special thanks to at least Cyndy Colavita, Bonnie Shoultz, Pam Walker, Rachel Zubal, Debra Sims, Maryann Barker, Stephen Simon, Dana Williams, and Laura Derr, for whom I have a great sense of fondness and gratitude. Without the presence of these individuals, my time at SU would have been not easy and I cannot imagine completing my doctoral studies without this source of constant support. Apart from faculty and SU staff, some of my graduate student colleagues deserve special thanks including Michael Schwartz, Cheryl Spear, Valerie Smith, Patricia English-Sand, Julia White, Rebecca Cory, Liat Ben-Moshe and Ester Kabuga. Their presence enriched my vi intellectual growth; in addition, life at SU would have been very difficult without their constant support outside the classroom. Cheryl Spear and Michael Schwartz have been my two most supportive colleagues whom I also count among the best of friends I have ever had in my life. Michael often drove me to the classes we shared and Cheryl introduced me to people when I arrived at SU. Both Michael and Cheryl always stood by me as fellow disabled and personal friends whenever I needed their support in my personal and professional life. Finally, it would have been impossible to have completed this journey of my doctoral studies without great support from numerous friends inside and outside SU. Some of them include Lisa Stubing, Sreeram Chaulia, Mike Ellis, Rohini Mutuswami, Ramesh Kumar Sarin, Om Prakash Mishra, Satish Kumar Mishra, Sarin Naredla, Radha Ganesan, and Ian Wilson. They all, along with Pam Walker, helped me in some way or other in arranging the data for my dissertation and refining it at various stages of its preparation. My friend and colleague at SU, Pam Walker deserves a special thanks in this context for her immense contribution in editing the draft of my dissertation. Because of my lack of good linguistics skills, the drafts I sent to her were very rough. She not only corrected the spelling and grammatical errors, but refined the expression of my thoughts and provided highly positive and creative feedback which helped significantly in giving final shape to this draft. If there is one person upon whom I depended the most outside the University life throughout my stay at Syracuse, it is Lisa Stubing, who has been my closest friend in Syracuse. She always stood by me through the best and the worst of times and helped me in taking care of routine house-keeping activities ranging from laundry to grocery shopping, enabling me to survive during my stay at Syracuse. Perhaps it would have been impossible without Lisa’s support to survive in a foreign land for so long and she indeed made my life much more smooth and comfortable than I could imagine. Once again, I am truly vii indebted to all of my friends, as it would not have been possible to complete my journey of doctoral studies without this immense and constant support.
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