Guest Post by VIRAJ KAFLE 

The landscape of disability rights in India underwent a seismic shift on December 27, 2015, not through a legislative amendment or a landmark judicial decree, but via a radio broadcast. During his Mann Ki Baat program, Prime Minister Narendra Modi suggested that the term viklang be replaced with divyang. While ostensibly a move to alter societal mindsets and reduce stigma, this nomenclature shift signaled a profound reorientation of the state’s relationship with its disabled citizenry. This declaration of “divinity” arrived a full year before the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPWD) Act of 2016 was actually passed, effectively setting a paternalistic tone for the rights-based framework that followed.

By invoking “divinity” to describe physical or sensory impairments, the discourse moved disability from a hard-won, rights-based framework into a deified, body-focused model that prioritizes symbolic elevation over material accessibility. As disability activist Nidhi Goyal has argued, this is merely a new way to tell the disabled they are “not normal”—moving them from “abnormal” to “supernormal,” but never simply equal. It is generally accepted that to be disabled is to be “disabled by society,” yet the divyang narrative replaces this political recognition with an abject surrender to divinity that reflects a forced consent of the disabled to their own marginalization. Continue reading Deified Bodies, Diminished Rights – A Critical Anatomy of the ‘Divyang’ Discourse: Viraj Kafle →