Monday, October 7, 2024
5:30 PM
One Bow Street, Third Floor
Kalpana will present her research in progress, after which there will be time for questions and feedback. All are welcome. Dinner will be served.
Abstract
Body Politics: Disability and the Indian Sepoy during the First World War
This chapter positions the Great War as a turning point in understanding how disability and able-bodiedness functioned within the British Empire through the case study of India. I explore how fears of nascent Indian nationalism, coupled with a profound reliance on Indian military labour and a fundamental distrust of the Indian population following the Revolt of 1857 heightened the surveillance of disabled Indian soldiers at every level. Disability in the wake of the Great War became an issue of imperial governance through the creation of disability pensions, the distribution and creation of prosthetic technologies and in response, the ever-present suspicion of malingering. As welfare and money became more readily available for Indian soldiers with disabilities, so too did the desire to define and separate the worthy from the unworthy disabled.
