Beyond Policy: How Kashmir’s Cultural Lens Continues to Shape Disability

As December 3 - International Day of Persons with Disabilities - approaches, the discourse in Kashmir once again turns toward accessibility, rights, and inclusion. Yet beneath these visible concerns lies a quieter, deeper challenge: the cultural narratives that shape how disability is understood in the Valley. Though India’s Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act 2016 sets a legal framework for equality, attitudes on the ground continue to be shaped by aesthetics, family expectations, and long-held social norms.

Such emphasis on physical beauty is neither new nor superficial in Kashmir; it is part of the social texture. Fair skin, symmetric features, and bodily “wholeness” are greatly idealised. This aesthetic vocabulary governs everyday interactions. When disability enters into this landscape, it is often perceived as a disruption-a visible deviation from the ideal Kashmiri body. Sympathy comes forth from families, neighbors, and even strangers. But beneath that oft-expressed sympathy is an implicit, deep-seated assumption that the disabled body is flawed, incomplete, or socially diminished.

What is hardly ever recognized in public discourse, however, is how such aesthetic obsession delineates the lived experiences of disabled Kashmiris. In villages and cities alike, a person’s social worth continues to be gauged by way of physical appearance, bodily perfection, and conformance to able-bodied norms. Beauty becomes a marker of worthiness, and disability a permanent stain overriding everything else-including talent, education, and achievement. The effect is that disabled individuals, no matter how accomplished, are stuck in the social imagination as incomplete.

Disability upsets the expectation of “normal life” in a collectively oriented society. The young generation is often judged, if not on personal merit, at least on their ability to fulfill the social script accepted as normal: education, stable work, marriage, parenthood, and community involvement. Disability, in this context, becomes a sign of otherness that families seek to explain and communities are quick to pass judgment on. Field observations reveal how disabled students are commonly underestimated in classrooms, how employers raise questions about productivity, and how autonomy within the family is commonly curtailed under the pretext of protection.

In Kashmir, this judgement becomes sharper because social respectability is tightly bound with bodily normalcy. A blind KAS officer, a deaf university faculty member, a wheelchair-using researcher- these are achievements remarkable by any standard. Yet the moment a disabled Kashmiri achieves something extraordinary, their disability remains the first and last thing society sees, their degree, rank, merit and hard work rarely allowed to be a focus of attention like those of their non-disabled peers. A disabled academic becomes “the professor who cannot see”, a disabled bureaucrat becomes “the officer with a defect” while a disabled artist becomes “the boy with the problem, haan wohi.” Yes, the achievement is acknowledged but never allowed to define them. They are celebrated but never fully accepted. And whenever a disabled individual makes that achievement, it is quickly reduced to comments such as “they get reservation anyway,” or when people nonchalantly say, “look, even people like them get jobs now, or even such people will study these days,” immediately shifting the discussion from merit to prejudice.

Disability also becomes a permanent qualifier, one that diminishes professional identity. A KAS officer is supposed to command respect and authority. But it is otherwise when the officer is disabled—the perception shifts; they remain a “disabled person first” and an officer only afterwards. The same happens in universities where disabled faculty routinely face paternalistic attitudes, unsolicited help, or outright doubt in their capabilities. The cultural imagination simply does not allow a disabled Kashmiri to be seen as complete, competent, or fully human in the way an able-bodied person is. This is not merely stigma; it is denial of wholeness.

It is in marriage that the stigma most visibly crystallises. Across districts, caregivers from North to South related stories of the resistance they faced in seeking matrimonial matches for their disabled children. Matters of family honour, social reputation and gossip often override matters of compatibility or agency. Many relate fear of a disability being genetic, or worry about dependence in the future, rendering disabled individuals insufficiently attractive marriage partners. This does not change according to education, professional skill or personal character-a sentiment echoed across South Asia.

Culture complicates this further: while Islamic teachings emphasise inclusion, dignity, and equality, the cultural interpretation of these teachings in Kashmir often couches disability in terms of divine will or spiritual test. Families often first seek healing through shrine visits and spiritual practices before medical or rehabilitative support. These traditions are comforting, yet at the very same time, they run the real risk of perpetuating the notion that disability is a question of fate and not a condition shaped at the intersection of social barriers, infrastructure gaps, and policy failures.

These larger narratives seep into everyday language and behaviour. Words such as “Noutwan “, “Bechare”, or “Adlyek ( half-body) continue to be part of everyday use, perpetuating hierarchies between disabled and able bodies. Staring, giving unsolicited advice, or talking over disabled people are seen as everyday interactions, not micro-aggressions. And in due time, this environment enacts exclusion-not by active antagonism but through banal assertions of incompletion.

Addressing disability in Kashmir, therefore, requires more than accessibility audits or inclusive announcements; it is a cultural shift-one that begins in homes, classrooms, and public spaces. Schools need to teach inclusion not as charity but as a social value. Media organisations need to portray disabled individuals in roles beyond helplessness and triumphalism. Families have to recognise autonomy as a right, not a privilege. Community discussions need to move away from pity and toward dignity.

As December 3 focuses the attention of the whole world on disability rights, Kashmir gets an opportunity to look within its social fabric. Inclusion cannot be brought about by mere acts and policies. It has to be interwoven into cultural ethos, language, and daily interaction. Only then can Kashmir expand the notion of beauty, worth, and normalcy to include persons with disabilities-not as exceptions but as an integral part of the social and cultural landscape.

Tufail Firdous, Ph.D Scholar at Jawahar Lal Nehru University.