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After years of struggle, the outsized population of deaf people in a sleepy Karnataka village is reaching out to the world
Syed Sardar Mehadi knows one thing: he will only marry a deaf girl. He is wearing a blue shirt and grey pants, and smiling under the glare of the sun. Syed is 22 years old, and has had a hearing impairment since birth.
Syed’s mentor and the village’s informal leader of the deaf community, Mir Fazil Raza, 49, is helping translate between English and sign language.
“Syed only wants to marry a deaf girl,” says Raza. But the course of love is complicated. “His parents are totally opposed to that.”
We are on one of Alipur’s main streets, standing with a group of other men outside Raza’s television shop. Five of the men are engrossed in conversation—a flurry of gestures—but there is barely a sound.
Except for Raza, none of the men in the group have either speech or hearing. They are among 146 such people in this village in Karnataka’s Chikkaballapura district, about 80km outside Bengaluru. A Shia Muslim enclave in a Hindu majority area, Alipur has for generations had a disproportionately large number of deaf people.
Last October, Raza, a former gram panchayat chief, helped set up the Alipur Unity Society, run by members of the deaf community. One of the first activities, which lasted the month of July, was conducting a fresh survey in the area to understand actual numbers of the deaf population, carried out by 15 members of the community.
The panchayat office says the 2011 census shows 11,625 people in the village, but that the actual figure is closer to 20,000. That puts the proportion of the deaf population here at about 0.75%, compared to government estimates for the national average: 0.41% (based on data from the 2011 census).
Generations of consanguineous marriages are believed to have led to this outsized population of people who cannot hear, the villagers believe. The tightly knit Shia community traces its forbearers to Iran, and remains particular about marrying within.
Some years ago, Raza learnt the Alipur Sign Language—the local dialect—later going on to learn the Indian Sign Language and other sign languages.
In 2009, a survey conducted by Raza, who acts as president and informal coordinator of the group, found 265 people with different “disabilities”. Of these, more than 100 people could not hear and speak. (Estimates range from 125 to 165.)
For a long time, Raza was vexed by this question: how can you prevent future generations from being born deaf? First, he got all of them blood tested, only to confirm what had been suspected: their profiles showed a high degree of marriage within the community. So, he started trying to encourage them to marry outside the village.
“But the result was the same,” he says. Then they tried screening wombs of pregnant women to understand the risks involved. “But even after that, children with disabilities continued to be born,” he says.
With no formal education and no special services, the community has suffered. They work as labourers, plumbers, electricians, or other jobs their fathers might have done. In 2014, Raza had to close the special school in the area after falling short of funds, a big setback for the community. But this October, with the promise of funds, he is hopeful of starting a school again. The earlier school was for deaf community members in particular, and had two special educators coming from Bengaluru every day.
Now, Raza conducts an awareness session of a kind through a one-hour class every evening. At least 25 people show up, and the focus is on religious education: all through signing. Before class, a small group invariably gathers near Raza’s television shop to watch the news—and ask questions later. The hope is they will be able to widen their understanding of the world.
