Why Do we reject people with disabilities?

 Why do we want to isolate them? Why do we not want them to be seen in our midst? Do they frighten us by their dependence? Does their demand for empathy exhaust us?

Krishna is described as beauty personified. Yet, his image as Jagannath in Puri, Orissa, is rather deformed. It has no hands, or a leg. The lips and nose are painted on. The eyes have no eyelids. And there are no ears. Often during festivals, artificial limbs of gold are given to the deity to complete him. The story goes that when the image was being carved, the sculptor had asked the patron king not to open the door until the work was completed. But he did, when he did not hear sounds of the wood being carved and polished. Thus the idol remained incomplete. In devotional songs, the incompleteness of Jagannath’s idol is often highlighted. And we wonder if there is a deeper meaning to Jagannath’s incompleteness. Is Jagnannath embodying a disabled person to remind ‘abled’ beings that we must not lose sight of those who are different from us, those who consider to be incomplete, damaged or abnormal? Does it express the essential incompleteness and imperfection of all things around us?

In the Puranas, we are told that Vinata, wife of Kashyapa, once laid two eggs. They did not hatch for a long time. Impatient, she broke one of the eggs. The child that emerged was incomplete – its lower half was malformed, it has no legs or genitals. This child came to be known as Aruna, god of dawn, and is was given a place in the pantheon of Hindu gods as the charioteer of the sun-god. Because its lower half is malformed, there are always questions if Aruna is male or female. In earlier Vedic texts, the god of dawn, charioteer of the sun, is described as a woman, Ushas. Incomplete or not, this disabled child of ambiguous gender is given a place in the sky.

But in the Mahabharata we see a very different society.Pandu who had Sickle Cell Anaemia was able to become king, After cursed that he will not be able to father a child, then only he renounces the throne voluntarily.Even Dhritarashtra,a blind man allowed to be king. All this perhaps shows the greatness of society at that time.

In the jungle, a disabled animal is killed instantly. The rest of its herd or pack does not stop to save it. The jungle does not care for the unfit. When humans behave similarly it indicates we are no different from animals – we have not yet embraced our humanity and become civilized. Perhaps the stories of Dhritarashtra and Aruna and the image of Jagannath are meant to make us think about these questions and our attitudes towards disabled people.