Disability in South Asia: History, Politics, and Rights

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for South Asia and the Center for Human Rights and International Justice.

PANEL DESCRIPTION

This panel examines the meanings of disability in South Asia, engaging with philosophical and theoretical questions about disability was well as historical, social, and cultural understandings of disability particular to South Asian contexts. Panel presentations cover a range of issues, including: medical, legal, and historical definitions of disability in South Asia; how these definitions intersect with other categories of identity, such as gender, caste, and class; advocacy for disability rights; and the use of assistive technologies for people with disabilities. Paying close attention to legacies of the stigmatization of disability in the region, the panel foregrounds the question of the politics of voice in asking who speaks for the experiences of people with disabilities in South Asia.

PARTICIPANT BIOS

Moderator: Rohit Chopra, Santa Clara University

Rohit Chopra is Professor of Communication at Santa Clara University and is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for South Asia, Stanford University for the 2024–2025 academic year. His research centers on the relationship between global media and cultural identity, with particular interests in global Hindu far-right online communities, the politics of media and memory, and discourses of disability in global media and culture.

Panelist: Jiya Pandya, Princeton University

Jiya Pandya is a scholar and activist who works at the intersections of disability studies, postcolonial theory, gender and sexuality studies, and transnational history. They are currently completing their PhD at Princeton University, with a dissertation on the history of the concept of “disability” in late colonial and postcolonial India. Their work has been published in Disability Studies Quarterly, Lateral, and QED: A Journal of GLBT Worldmaking and has been supported by the W. Newcombe Foundation and Centre for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies (BBQ+).

Panelist: Aparna Nair, University of Toronto Scarborough 

Aparna Nair is Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough, at the Department for Health and Society/Center for Global Disability Studies. Her upcoming book “Fungible Bodies” examines the relationship between disability and colonialism in British India. Professor Nair also works on the histories of technologies for disabled people; the histories of vaccination and quarantine in India; the material histories of vaccination; and the changing representations of disability and difference in popular culture.

Panelist: Vandana Chaudhry, City University of New York – College of Staten Island

Vandana Chaudhry is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work at the City University of New York – College of Staten Island. Her research focuses on disability in the Global South, digitalization, neoliberal governance, disability justice, and culturally competent practices. Her scholarship offers analysis of how big data, algorithmic regimes, and biometric technologies are reshaping disability welfare systems, restricting access to government benefits, and in the process reconfiguring the category of disability.