The lepers, lunatics, the lame, the blind, the infirm and the making of asylums and benevolent charities: the Indian merchant class and disability in colonial India
ISSN: 1751-1348
Article publication date: 1 February 2021
Issue publication date: 1 December 2021
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the role of the Indian merchant class in 19th-century colonial India in addressing the social concerns of disability. Specifically, it addresses why and how business engaged with disability in colonial India.
Design/methodology/approach
This study’s methodology entailed historiographical approach and archival investigation of official correspondence and letters of business people in 19th-century colonial India.
Findings
Using institutional theory, the study’s findings indicate that guided by philanthropic and ethical motives, Indian businesses, while recognizing the normative and cognitive challenges, accepted the regulative institutional pressures of colonial India and adopted an involved and humane approach. This manifested in the construction of asylums and the setting up of bequeaths and charitable funds for people with disability (PwD). The principal institutional drivers in making of the asylums and the creation of benevolent charities were religion, social practices, caste-based expectations, exposure to Western education and Victorian and Protestantism ideologies, the emergence of colonial notions of health, hygiene and medicine, carefully crafted socio-political and economic policies of the British Raj and the social aspirations of the native merchant class.
Originality/value
In contrast to the 20th-century rights-based movement of the West, which gave birth to the global term of “disability,” a collective representation of different types of disabilities, this paper locates that cloaked in individual forms of sickness, the identity of PwD in 19th-century colonial India appeared under varied fragmented labels such as those of leper, lunatic, blind and infirm. This paper broadens the understanding of how philanthropic business response to disability provided social acceptability and credibility to business people as benevolent members of society. While parallelly, for PwD, it reinforced social marginalization and the need for institutionalization, propagating perceptions of unfortunate and helpless members of society.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Late Mr M Miles for his encouragement and guidance, Dr Shilpaa Anand (Associate Professor, BITS Pilani, Hyderabad and Distinguished Research Fellow, Centre for Disability Studies, NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad) for her generous discussions during the early stages of this paper and the anonymous peer reviewers, for their insightful comments.
Citation
Choudhury Kaul, S., Sandhu, M.S. and Alam, Q. (2021), "The lepers, lunatics, the lame, the blind, the infirm and the making of asylums and benevolent charities: the Indian merchant class and disability in colonial India", Journal of Management History, Vol. 27 No. 4, pp. 464-491. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMH-07-2020-0046
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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