But the swaraj of my—our—dream recognizes no race or religious distinctions. Nor is it to be the monopoly of lettered persons nor yet of moneyed men. Swaraj is to be for all, including the former, but emphatically including the maimed, the blind, the starving toiling millions.
– Mahatma Gandhi, Young India (May 1, 1930)
AS INDIA CELEBRATED its 80th Independence Day this year, we must ask what freedom or Swaraj may mean for India’s disfranchised communities, such as sexual subalterns, Dalits, and the disabled. As a disabled legal academic myself, the conception of Swaraj from my vantage of disability holds profound significance. There are several imaginations, interpretations, and aspirations of what freedom may mean to different groups.
However, in our dominant interpretations of freedom, often articulated from an elitist historiographical standpoint, the marginalized and their understanding of freedom are excluded. Therefore, this Independence Day should be used to reimagine freedom, or Swaraj, through the prism of those excluded from the dominant imaginations of what our freedom may mean.
Flag of Independence and the Question of Testimonial and Hermeneutical Injustices towards the Disabled
The flag of independence may not necessarily mean much for those whose lives are often shaped by unfreedoms. This point is significantly felt by persons with disabilities. We are at the margins of India’s constitutional and political imaginations, what I call constitutional borderlands; our concerns remain politically benign for India’s political class, and our rights are seen through the prism of charity and pity.
In an earlier article for the Indian Express, Dr. Sanjay Jain and I have pointed out the ableist nature of the Indian Constitution, as it places disability along with unemployment, old age, and sickness under Article 41. This semantic order of Article 41 is not innocent, as it exposes the ableist understanding of our constitutional makers. The rejection of the petition of the Deaf and Dumb Society of India by the Constituent Assembly highlights how the Indian Constitution makers did not believe the testimonies and lived experiences of India’s disabled, as they refused to accept the demand of removing forms of discrimination built into existing laws and affirmative actions for the disabled in jobs and education. Rohit De and Ornit Shani see this episode as one in which disabled persons emerge as ‘constitutional actors’; however, from my vantage point, it’s a story of unfreedom in which we are blocked from meaning-making and from sharing our constitutional aspirations in a newly emerged postcolonial nation. This episode is a chilling reminder of testimonial injustice against the disabled. Miranda Fricker, who conceptualized ‘testimonial injustice’, defines it as the harm inflicted on a group to discount their credibility. In this form of injustice, harm is committed against a group or an individual in their capacity as a knower. A group or an individual faces a ‘credibility deficit’ due to the prejudice of dominant groups. The disabled definitely attempted to become ‘constitutional actors’ during the formation of the constitution, but they faced prejudice from non-disabled people who were the primary and dominant actors in the constituent assembly. These are not merely ‘constitutional silences.’ In fact, we have not developed a vocabulary to name such unfreedoms of testimonial erasure within our Constitutional vocabulary, as the primary meaning-makers of the Constitution have hitherto been liberal males.
We, the disabled, are at the margins of India’s constitutional and political imaginations; our concerns remain politically benign for India’s political class, and our rights are seen through the prism of charity and pity.
One need not be the prisoner of history. Swaraj can be claimed by disabled persons through constitutional means. In Om Rathod (2024), the Supreme Court underscored the value of fraternity among citizens and human dignity in ensuring the constitutional rights of disabled persons, envisioning the Constitution as a progressive grundnorm of our democratic republic. Invoking fraternity to ensure medical admission for a disabled student in the backdrop of the ableist National Medical Commission (‘NMC’) guidelines for medical admission is a significant breakthrough in our constitutional jurisprudence. In Pragya Prasun (2025), the Court granted ‘super-statute’ status to the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 (‘RPwD Act, 2016’), and asserted that any denial of rights under this Act will amount to a violation of fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution. In my view, the RPwD Act, 2016 can go beyond that, serving as a helpful interpretative text for interpreting the constitution itself and curing constitutional ableism. It will be a radical method that will challenge the conservative way of reading and interpreting the Constitution itself.
However, Swaraj for the disabled cannot be ensured merely by court judgments in a society where ableism pervades. At best, the courts are doing ‘segue readings’ of the Constitution to provide reasonable accommodation to the disabled. However, ‘segue readings’ cannot alone cure foundational ableism and testimonial erasure within the oeuvre of the constitution text. There is another twist in the tale of progressive realization of ‘reasonable accommodation,’ i.e. it seems courts have developed a normative category of disabled litigants who are from a middle-class background, having middle-class aspirations of reasonable accommodation, for medical admission, air travel, KYC, making OTTs accessible. However, the disabled who do not fit into these categories cannot be assured of reasonable accommodation, especially those disabled who articulate themselves politically and refuse to fit into the State-centric disability discourse.
Furthermore, disability has been used as a metaphor for punishment by state instrumentalities. ‘Operation Langda’ is now a State-sanctioned term for ‘half-encounters’. This shows that the state gazes at disability as punishment. Liberal legalism cannot cure such pervasive ableism. To fight it, we require an assertive insurgent vision of disability justice that holds political actors of every camp and hue accountable.
Overcoming Ableism Through Assertive Political Participation
Talila A. Lewis defines ableism as: A system of assigning value to people's bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, productivity, desirability, intelligence, excellence, and fitness. These constructed ideas are deeply rooted in eugenics, anti-Blackness, misogyny, colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. This systemic oppression leads to people and society determining people's value based on their culture, age, language, appearance, religion, birth or living place, "health/wellness", and/or their ability to satisfactorily re/produce, "excel" and "behave."
As ableism is rooted in eugenics, anti-Blackness (or anti-Dalit in the Indian context), misogyny, colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism, it is incumbent on any insurgent vision of Disability justice to articulate itself against these sociogenic injustices and unfreedoms.
Combating Ableism would require ensuring equal political participation for disabled persons and treating their aspirations as a serious constitutional and political goal. Recently, we saw enthusiastic participation of the disabled community in the ‘Gen Z protest’. However, as several disabled people participated in the movement, the leadership of the movement itself used metaphors of disability as ridicule and contempt, in which it clearly came out that so-called progressive movements see disability as a negative and stigmatized human condition.
We also do not see an alternative political imagination within India’s political parties regarding disability. Dalit groups' opposition to ‘Harijan’ forced it to fade from the political vocabulary, but the similar coinage ‘Divyang’ did not receive critical political attention.
Lack of Political Imagination among India’s Political Class for the Disabled
We also do not see an alternative political imagination within India’s political parties regarding disability. Dalit groups' opposition to ‘Harijan’ forced it to fade from the political vocabulary, but the similar coinage ‘Divyang’ did not receive critical political attention. ‘Divyang’ came from the Prime Minister, and hence, it can be assumed that the political ideology he belongs to supports it despite it being semantically paternalistic towards disabled persons. However, India’s opposition parties have also accepted it without protest. Leader of the opposition, Rahul Gandhi, has opposed the term ‘Vanvasi’ for tribal communities and uses ‘Adivasi’ instead, as he is of the view that ‘Vanvasi’ comes from RSS’s ideological framework. However, ‘Divyang’ has been accepted by the Congress and the other opposition parties as if they lack any alternative political imagination for the disabled. Rahul Gandhi himself, and the Congress party use ‘Divyang’ frequently, and it shows his lack of interest in imagining an alternative political vision for India’s disabled.
Concluding remarks:
As The Leaflet came out with a special issue on Swaraj, I found it both profound and incomplete. Contributors in the special edition saw hope in the student protest as ‘a new era of Indian democracy’, ‘youth of India defending Swaraj’, and ‘resisting corporate-communal restructuring of India’, etc. The special edition failed to address what Swaraj may mean to sexual subalterns or embodied subalterns. This omission is important to me, because we witnessed India’s Transgender community being up in arms earlier this year against Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026, an Act which is a testament of unfreedom for the Community. Jantar-Mantar Gen Z protest leaders could not provide fraternity to the disabled community.
None of the articles in the special issue mentioned the struggles of the transgender community this year against a problematic law that erases their autonomy, or CJP’s contempt for the disabled community.
None of the articles mentioned the struggles of the transgender community this year against a problematic law that erases their autonomy, or CJP’s contempt for the disabled community. Commentators saw Jantar Mantar’s protest as a ‘spectacular’ moment of reclaiming ‘Swaraj,’ ignoring the everyday struggles of extremely vulnerable classes against unfreedom. The student movement may have reclaimed the right to resist, but the celebration of that reclamation as a new era of democracy conceals a difficult question i.e., what kind of Swaraj is being recovered when disabled and transgender people remain outside its political imagination and when disability itself continues to furnish the movement with a vocabulary of ridicule?
In-built ableism in our governmentality, constitutional discourse, and political engagements produce unfreedoms that make our Swaraj difficult, if not impossible. Swaraj is always an unfinished project, and every group attempts to understand and shape ‘Swaraj’ through its own lived experience. In one conversation with me, Prof. Amita Dhanda said, ‘Every generation has to fight its own kind of freedom struggles.’ Maybe our freedom struggle is against ableism around us. Our Swaraj will come with smashing the ableism.