My Lovely Anjali
Grave-site of euthanasia child' victims from the Spiegelgrund clinic at Wien-Zentralfriedhof (Jean-Frédéric, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)
It is October of 1939 and Adolf Hitler has issued a directive "for expanding the authority of physicians…so that patients considered incurable, according to the best available human judgment of their state of health, can be granted a mercy killing", thus establishing a legal and medical mandate for justifying the murder of those with lives “unworthy of living”.
People with mental and physical disabilities were among the first minority groups targeted for mass murder under the Nazi T-4 or Euthanasia Program in the year 1939.
In total, 70,273 people with disabilities were killed at the ‘euthanasia’ centers between January 1940 and August 1941 before the program was “officially” halted…but continued in secret.
Infants were systematically starved to death. Patients were murdered at hospitals, and medical facilities were weaponized to become instruments of mass murder.
The Nazi regime disregarded the humanity of these individuals looking upon them as defective products because of their disability, rather than as living, breathing human beings. They viewed those individuals as “other” or “subhuman” and spread propaganda to that effect.
Flashforward to 2023.
We have made a lot of progress between now and then. But it was only less than 100 years ago that Hitler had deemed those with mental and physical disabilities as “useless” and “unworthy of living”, and while a lot of things have changed for the better, society still struggles to recognize people with disability, particularly those with mental disabilities, as people first. That instinct or tendency to immediately label and stigmatize individuals with disabilities as something other, is still present.
I recently watched the movie Anjali, that perfectly captured that sentiment. My mother had watched the movie more than thirty years ago when it was first released, and it had left quite an impression on her. She recommended that I watch it over my break.
Simply put, Anjali is the story of a little girl and her relationship with her family, friends and community, except that Anjali is born with a mental disability. In 1939 Nazi Germany, 50 years prior to the movie’s release, her character would have been deemed unworthy of life and left to starve to death at the hospital.
The movie Anjali held up a mirror to society’s darker impulses, emphasizing the challenges faced by families as they raise their children in a prejudiced society where a child with a disability is seen as a mark of shame rather than a source of joy.
A society where people will carelessly refer to a child as that “pagal ladki” or “mad girl”. A society that will not hesitate to ostracize a child from playing with friends because of misplaced fear of contagion of her disability.
Anjali, released three decades ago held up a mirror to society that unfortunately still holds true today in many ways. Even now, society will not hesitate to label and stigmatize another individual simply because they think, and act in a manner different from everyone else.
What set Anjali apart though was that it also showed what happens when people stop seeing just the label and start seeing the “person” behind the label.
Anjali was always Anjali. Not the girl with a disability or that “pagal ladki” (mad girl). She is not defined by her mental disability. It takes time but the audience along with her family and community learn to see Anjali as an innocent child like any other. We see her go from being known as that girl in her community to being christened as “our lovely Anjali baby”.
The children’s first impression of Anjali was founded out of the sheer ignorance, pop culture of their day and their parents’ hushed gossip about this girl in the neighborhood which permeated into the broader mockery and torment of Anjali as a “pagal ladki”.
However, when Anjali’s brother introduced her to the children as a potential new friend, they took the time to actually see this lovely child, rather than the label of “madness” and stereotypes they had liberally and ignorantly associated with Anjali. Anjali was now their playmate, their friend, and their fellow partner in mischief.
The children are devastated and mourn her death as that of their dear friend. Over the course of the movie, her community learned to see Anjali as who she was. As Anjali.
Too often, the media chooses to define the entirety of an individual by their mental disability often presenting a distorted and extreme image that only serves to perpetuate prejudice. The individuals is forgotten.
What’s more is that the depiction of mental disability and mental illness for that matter in media can have a profound impact on how society views individuals with mental disability. The Nazis used popular media (radio, newspapers, cinema, literature) to great effect to perpetuate the stigma of disability and illness to carry out their crimes. Cinematic depictions of mental illness have profound and lasting implications in the real world. What we see influences how we think and ultimately how we act.
Anjali reminds us that there is a person behind that label of “mad”, “retarded”, “pagal” – a living breathing human being with their own unique personalities, experiences, joys and pains. Anjali reminds us that 70, 273 is not just another statistic from the Nazi era. That number not only emphasizes the living, breathing individuals, who were deprived of their right to life, but it also describes what the world lost - how we were all robbed of the opportunity to live with, and enjoy the love and uniqueness of so many.
