Anita Ghai with friends on her birthday in 2021
Anita Ghai (October 23, 1958 – December 11, 2024) psychology scholar and practitioner, feminist and disability rights activist, taught at Jesus and Mary College, Delhi University, for about three decades, then moved to Ambedkar University Delhi, from where she retired as Professor. She is the author of (Dis)embodied Form: Issues of Disabled Women (2003), Rethinking Disability in India (2015) and a significant edited volume Disability in South Asia: Knowledge and Experiences (2018)
How much I learnt from you, Anita my friend, and how am I performing this unthinkable task of writing your obituary! I feel as if I am writing this for you to read, for you to be gently critical about, because for sure I would have missed a nuance or two while writing about the points at which gender and disability intersect, for you cannot be written about without reference to your thinking and your scholarship. About three decades ago you sought me out to have a conversation on disability, and that destablizing conversation never ever ended. You blew open my theoretical horizons by introducing me to the field of Disability Studies, to the idea of decentering disability from a medical to a social model, to the idea that we are not divided between abled and disabled bodies, but that we all occupy a continuum of being Temporarily Abled Bodies. A sudden fracture, an illness, and within a split second you move from abled to disabled body. You wear spectacles, your hearing is mildly impaired, you have that problem in bending your wrist because of a childhood fall – each one of us is on that continuum. Continue reading Salaam Anita! 1958 – 2024
