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Deafness in India Madan M. Vasishta IN D I A I S the world’s largest democracy, with a population of more than 1 billion people. The country accounts for 2.4% of the world’s land area but has 16% of the world’s population and is the largest country in the Indian subcontinent. India is the home of one of the oldest civilizations in the world and is diverse ethnically (72% Aryan, 25% Dravidian, 3% Oriental). Hindus (82%) and Muslims (12%) make up the most of Indian population, with Christians (2.3%), Sikhs (1.9%), and Buddhists (less than 1%) contributing to the religious fabric of India. This diversity in ethnicity and religion has resulted from invasions from various parts of the world since before Alexander the Great. India finally became independent in 1947 after about 150 years of British rule. Therefore, India’s education system is heavily influenced by British traditions. There are 22 official languages, with Hindi and English being the main national languages. India is mainly a rural country. According to the 2001 census, about 285 million (27%) people live in urban areas and the remaining (73%) in rural areas. The literacy rate has been rising rapidly during the 20th century and has now reached almost 65% for the total population . The literacy rate for men (75%) is higher than for women (54%). India is one of the fastest growing economies and is presently the world’s fourth largest economy. The effect of this burgeoning economy, however, is not felt much in rural areas, where more than 260 million people (only somewhat fewer than the entire United States population of 300,000,000) live below the poverty line. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Despite the size of India, very little research has been conducted or shared in the area of deafness . Miles (2000) compiled a historical bibliography on education of children who are handicapped in South Asia and found only a few citations related to deafness and the education of children who are deaf over a span of 4,000 years. Miles pointed out that, until the 20th century , deafness was considered a punishment for sins of earlier incarnations. People who were deaf were not allowed to inherit property by law until the beginning of the 20th century (Miles, 2001). With the prevalence of such beliefs, it is not surprising that Indian society does not make deaf education a priority. Like many Asian and African countries, education of deaf children in India was first started by Catholic missionaries. There is very little information available about earlier schools for the deaf in India. This brief review of history of schools for the deaf is mostly based on an annotated bibliography by Miles (2000), which is sketchy. Additional information about founders of these schools, funding sources, curricula, methodologies, and roles of the deaf in 46 these schools will help provide a wealth of information not only from a historical perspective but also from education and societal perspectives. The first school for the deaf opened in 1885 in Bombay (Hull, 1913), followed by the opening of a school in Calcutta in 1893 (Banerji, 1904a) and another in Palamcotta in 1896 (Swainson, 1906). In 1903, there were an estimated 70,000 children who were deaf in India. Of these, only 52 (or .07%) were enrolled in the three schools (Banerji, 1904a). This figure of 70,000 is grossly underestimated because the present number of deaf people is about 10 million. Because the majority of the Indian population resides in villages, it is understandable that many deaf people were excluded from this estimate. The number of schools for the deaf increased sporadically during the 20th century, reaching a reported high of 73 in the 1960s, but decreasing to 70 in the 1970s (Brill, 1986). It appears, however, that what had been stated as the actual number of schools was only an estimate . In 1974, the All India Federation of the Deaf reported the existence of 117 schools for the deaf (Bhat, 1975). The first research-based information on schools for the deaf was compiled in 1999 by the Ali Yavar Jung National Institute for the Hearing Handicapped (NIHH) and was published in a directory format. The directory includes information about 431 schools (Ali Yavar Jung National Institute for the Hearing Handicapped, 2000). Most (330) of the schools are very small in size and are operated by nongovernment organizations. Three government-operated schools are large. Each of these schools has about 550 students. The...

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