Madireddy Lakshmi Bhavana | Centre for Rights of Differently-Abled (Symbiosis Law School,Hyderabad) | 6th November 2019
Movies are one of the major entertainment and informational sources in India and it has taken a significant role in the lives of Indian citizens. These can be considered as a media which has the capacity to influence the audience on any controversial or unfamiliar issues. Disability has been one of the issues where people lack sensitization and awareness and it has been largely marginalized in our Indian society. There is a traditional belief in our country where it is believed that disability is a punishment for the deeds committed in the past life. The saddest part is that there is an existence of this kind of belief in a disabled person’s mind which is very common in our country. Various NGOs and organizations have tried to break this kind of stereotype through different kinds of activities and tasks but it has been to a very limited extent. Movies can be one of the media which can raise awareness towards the disability in the minds of Indian citizens in order to make them understand the problems and provide a direct experience of a disabled person’s life. When a movie character is based on a disabled person, it depicts about a particular disability and how the person communicates, behaves and leads a life. One of the earliest movies, Jeevan Naiya, 1936 has portrayed the traditional belief of of disability as a punishment written by Niranjan Pal driven by an idea of social injustice and indifference faced by the disabled people. The movie is about a rich guy who rejects his wife because of her background of dancers who end up losing his sight and taken care by the same wife who he has rejected. Famous Tamil industry actor, Rajnikanth in 1979 acted in the movie Netrikkan, where he ends up being on a wheel chair due to his wicked activities throughout the movie. There are many more movies in the past which has depicted the idea of karma being the reason of the disability which has created an impact on the audience believing it to be true and justifiable reason for a disability. There are also movies which have portrayed disabled persons as a strong personality such as Thakur from Sholay (1975), Haider (2014) etc. To a large extent, there are movies which portray disabled persons in a comic role and making jokes on their disability giving it a very serious negative impact on the audience. It creates a stigma of laughing on these kinds of jokes which are very inappropriate, disrespectful and inconsiderate towards the disabled. Even though there are many movies which depict the disabled persons in a bad light, there are also incredible movies which show the independence of few characters. Sparsh (1980), lead role played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui is portrayed as a very independent principal of a school and the movie also shows the reality of inaccessibility of these disabled persons. In 2005, Chennai based NGO Ability foundation organized an international disability film festival to promote unique and inspiring platform of extraordinary movies with a purpose of creating awareness about disability and to break down the stereotypes. This film festival is being conducted every year since 2005 drawing many film makers and producers attend this film festival. There has been a positive influence of movies on the audience regarding disabled persons and through acceptance of these kinds of movies, there is a high scope of effective and appropriate use of movies to portray the reality of the lives of disabled persons.
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