Mahesh: Thanks for bringing this up. What we know as the "independent living movement" began in the US and later spread to Europe and elsewhere. It was a way for people with disabilities to reject their identity as medical mistakes and reinvent themselves as a minority group experiencing exclusion based on an artificial social construct. In doing this many of the typical American philosophies of self reliance and individuality became a part of the thinking and actions disabled people took to express their independence. By the way, these values of self sufficiency and so forth are a direct result of how the US was settled and were developed in order to survive. I have crossed the US by road and train many times but I am still astonished at how those people lived in all that opened land with no one to depend on but themselves. These values are still in practice today and became a part of what we know as the independent living movement.
As with most social movements the ways in which independence of disabled people was expressed took on the most extreme forms. Part of it was experimentation and some was the realization that things could be a lot better than in the past. I remember working in independent living centers in the late 1980's and there was always this discussion about why immigrants with disabilities did not seek services from these centers. The movement leaders discovered that in most of the world, people, including the disabled, have no desire to live alone in an apartment as Americans did and that people in the rest of the world viewed things in a more interdependent way. As a result of the pressure from immigrant communities telling the centers that living alone ran counter to their cultural values, things have begun to move back to a more workable stance which is a bit more tolerant of diverse views on what independence means and also tolerance for the choices people make in their personal lives. There is still a long way to go to develop an understanding of how interdependence works in different societies. Although many of the most visible and vocal blind groups in the US still hold with the notion of individuality as the ultimate expression of their independence, there are increasing numbers of blind people who are looking for more interdependence in their lives and are looking outside of American culture to find it. The independence philosophies developed in the west are very much applicable in countries like India and can be adapted to work within Indian culture but only with appropriate training and family support. As with anything, look at the menu, take what you want and leave the rest. But do it in a way that maximizes self determination within your particular circumstances and don't assume that something can't or shouldn't be done. It's the absolutes that get us into trouble. Jean Register for AccessIndia convention 2011(November 12-13) at: http://www.accessindia.org.in/harish/convention.htm Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/accessindia@accessindia.org.in/ To unsubscribe send a message to accessindia-requ...@accessindia.org.in with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
