BANGALORE, INDIA, September 9, 2006: When Javed Abidi, a former journalist who is wheelchair bound and now directs the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People in New Delhi, was frightened and humiliated when he had to be carried through an Indian airport door because the airport has no ramps, it was the last straw for Abidi. He sued the state-owned Indian airlines and in 1998 the Supreme Court ruled that the airlines provide wheelchair lifts. Little did Abidi realize that his initiative would trigger further law suits in a country where the 1995 Disability Act was weakly implemented. Since that time Meenakshi Balasubramanian who has polio has sued temple authorities in the southern state of Tamil Nadu because Hindu devotees were not allowed to enter the temple with their wheelchairs and crutches. Now the temples must provide wheelchairs to devotees if they do not allow them to use their own. Balasubramanian says, “I do feel it’s our right, a religious right, a fundamental right. We need to be allowed to worship the way we want to.”
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