School Without Walls

6

THE INDIAN CONTEXT

HISTORICAL RECALL

Writers in the past fifty years, both Indian and foreign, have been poorly informed about Indian special needs education and disability care in the 19th century— and for mental retardation and orthopaedic disabilities, the developments up to 1947.

 

—Miles, 1994, p. 2

 

Miles (1994) has undertaken the exercise of documenting the existence of disability care and education in nineteenth century India. He observes:

The exercise is not one of acedemic interest alone. It has implications for the current disability service developments in India and neighbouring countries. Experiments with ‘integrated’ educational services and Western plans for ‘Community Based Rehabilitation’ are underway, premised partly on ...