Psychosocial disability activisms in India: knowledges and practices towards justice, from the margins

This thesis employs intersectionality and disability justice to inform a study of how activists with psychosocial disability in India understand and ‘do’ psychosocial disability. It responds to key critiques of existing literature: the absence of an intersectional lens in disability activism; the emphasis on a legalistic rights-based approach in disability; the dominance of the global North in framing the concept of ‘psychosocial disability’; the positioning of persons with psychosocial disability as objects rather than epistemic actors. My research draws on crip and critical disability theorisations as well as my own experiences as a Mad disabled researcher to analyse interviews with activists occupying multiply marginalised socio-political positions, including psychosocial disablement, in India. The analysis of 25 interview texts reveals that at the margins of the mainstream psychosocial disability activism, activists employ ‘psychosocial disability’ as a radical lens to explain, understand, and ultimately challenge oppressive structures such as casteism, fascism and militarisation, the criminal (in)justice system, and cisheteropatriarchy. They grapple with and attempt to resolve the tensions between abolition and reform in ways which bring together radical dreams and everyday practices of care and community-building while simultaneously navigating and negotiating with deeply broken medico-legal regimes. The demands of neoliberalism and fascism within movements present unique challenges for disabled and marginalised activists in India, and they undertake innovative ways to create spaces of liberation within and at the margins of a mainstream movement. The thesis contributes to disability studies and social movement literature by providing an example of what an intersectional liberatory practice can look like, the commitments that inform and animate it, as well as the struggles, challenges, and contradictions which shape it. This thesis invites activists and scholars embedded in movements of all kinds to bring a crip perspective on organising and resistance.