Divyanjan: The Narrative Of Divine Body And The Bio-Politics Of Disability In India

Abstract

After capturing power in Centre in 2014 general election, Bhartiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance Government had made an effort to turn the political narrative of many issues upside down. For last few years, the term Divyangaassumes significance in the popular parlance to refer to persons with disability. The Government of India propagated the term Divyanga to represent the disabled people in 2016 when the Rights of the Persons with Disability Bill was placed in parliament. Disabled people are of course one of the most oppressed category in any given society who are often been viewed as a medical category rather than a political minority. Various policies and legislations have been formulated at different points of time to address the problem of disability in India. In this connection, the paper analyses how the Indian state has initiated different measures to govern its disabled population to the rationality of the state apparatus. The present paper also makes an attempt to engage Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics that denotes the power of the state through which it creates knowledge and devices to control the life of human being.