Nuances of the unique and evolving conceptualisation of intellectual disability in India: A study of the changing artistic parlance of representing intellectually disabled people in mainstream Hindi cinema

• Published in: British journal of learning disabilities Vol. 50; no. 2; pp. 166 - 177
• Main Author: Deb, Paromita
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidderminster Wiley 01.06.2022; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subjects: Attitudes toward Disabilities; autism; Body image; Bollywood; Civil Rights; Context; Developmental disabilities; Disabilities; dyslexia; embodiment; Film studies; Foreign Countries; intellectual and developmental disability; Intellectual disabilities; Intellectual Disability; People with disabilities; Popular Culture; Public Policy; Representations; Self Concept; India
• ISSN: 1354-4187; 1468-3156
• DOI: 10.1111/bld.12467

Owing to the different models of disablement in different religions and cultures around the world, social and aesthetic representations of intellectually disabled people are diverse in various societies. Disability is perceived in a different way in India than in the West. There are very few studies on the complex role of  Indian mainstream Hindi cinema in the representation of intellectual and developmental disabilities in India. This paper explores the potential of shifting representations of intellectual and developmental disability in the late twentieth and early twenty‐first century Bollywood films in the context of multiple aesthetic challenges they pose. The shift in screen image of intellectual impairment is strongly related to the shifting and ambiguous sociocultural model of personhood in India. In earlier Indian Hindi films, characters with intellectual disabilities were depicted in terms of good/bad moralistic labels, compromised body image, leading to aesthetic undesirability. In later Hindi films, they were instead represented as enduring human beings. In short, in earlier Hindi films, there was a discriminatory hegemonic bias in the depiction of intellectually disabled characters, in contrast to that in later Hindi films, where they were depicted in richly diverse perspectives. The changing artistic parlance becomes even more interesting in the context of major developments in Indian governmental policies and rights for the disabled in the last two decades. Thus, the paper highlights that contemporary Hindi films urge the audience to consider intellectual and developmental disability as a multilayered issue and rather than merely as a disease. Accessible summary Our ideas about disability are linked with those of family, religion and tradition in a particular society. Cinema also reflects our perceptions and concepts of disability. This paper is about the how people with intellectual disabilities have been shown in Hindi cinema in the last 30 years, and how intellectual disability is understood in India. In Hindi cinema, intellectually disabled characters are represented in a way that is slightly different from those in Western literature and films. Research on representations of intellectual disability in cinema is important as it can stimulate healthy discussions on a more empathetic society with a better understanding of the various facts related to intellectual disability.