Challenging Ableism and Redefining Normalcy: Disability Narratives in Indian Cinema

Aparnaa Kundu

doi:10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i03.46676

Challenging Ableism and Redefining Normalcy: Disability Narratives in Indian Cinema

Author(s)	Ms. Aparnaa Kundu
Country	India
Abstract	This paper interrogates how Hindi-language cinema constructs, circulates, and occasionally contests ableist notions of “normalcy” from the studio era to the streaming age. Drawing on a corpus of disability featuring or centered commercially released features (1936-2024) and their paratexts, the study triangulates close textual analysis with media-effects theory and disability-studies frameworks. Each film is coded against six disability models—Charity/Karma, Medical-tragedy, Bio-psycho-social, Social, Human-rights, and Critical Disability Studies—and the frequency of associated tropes is mapped to political-economy factors and reception patterns. Findings reveal the persistent hegemony of individualised frames: the Medical or Karmic model appears in 65 percent of titles, while “super-crip inspiration” narratives surface in 48 percent. By contrast, social-barrier stories account for only 19 percent, human-rights plots 6 percent, and intersectional or CDS perspectives under 3 percent. Industry gatekeeping, star-system economics, and audience-gratification loops jointly entrench these patterns, privileging bankable non-disabled stars and sanitised, upper-caste urban settings. Intersectional absence is especially stark: caste-disability and queer-crip narratives are virtually invisible, despite their empirical prevalence in Indian society. Temporal analysis traces a cautious shift from early moral allegories (Jeevan Naiya, Aadmi) through sentimental “resilience” dramas (Koshish, Sadma) to contemporary attempts at authenticity (Taare Zameen Par, Ahaan). Yet even the most progressive texts remain circumscribed by middle-class privilege, rendering disability “palatable” rather than political. Recent policy nudges—such as the Supreme Court’s 2024 guidelines on ableist imagery and UNESCO’s We Care Film Festival—signal institutional appetite for change but currently lack enforcement muscle. The paper argues that dismantling cinematic ableism requires more than increased visibility; it demands an epistemic shift from curing characters to curing culture. Embedding CDS lenses in film education, mandating authentic casting, and incentivising stories that locate disability within intersecting structures of caste, gender, and class are proposed as concrete levers for cultivating an inclusive screen ecology.
Keywords	Disability, disability studies, media studies
Field	Sociology > Health
Published In	Volume 7, Issue 3, May-June 2025
Published On	2025-06-05
DOI	https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i03.46676
Short DOI	https://doi.org/g9pzwv

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Challenging Ableism and Redefining Normalcy: Disability Narratives in Indian Cinema

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