Dr. Hemachandran Karah was born and raised in Chennai. His father Srinivasan was an employee of Tamil Nadu Electricity Board while his mother worked for a cooperative society. He has only one sibling a younger sister named Sumathi.
His formative years were spent at Little Flower School where he did his schooling in Tamil medium and later shifted to St. Louis School for the blind in Adyar. He completed his higher secondary education at MCTM, Purasawalkam.
Due to his visual impairment, he was unable to read books and study by himself, so he sought the help of his friends and his parents. There were volunteers in school who were of great help to him.
His college education was initially done in Loyola College where he pursued B.A. in English Literature. He followed it up with a Master’s degree in Literature at Hyderabad University. He got a lot of exposure over here as he lived with friends in a residential hostel in Central University campus. Here, either his classmates used to read for him or he used to visit the home of a reader Ranjani. There was a Readers Association for the blind that comprised of mostly women, especially home makers who used to read out lessons for the visually impaired students.
He returned to Chennai to do M.Phil at the Madras University. While studying here, he took up assignments like writing reports for newspapers etc.
As Hemachandran had his heart set on academics, he was interested in further studies. Lady luck smiled on him and he secured a scholarship at the Cambridge University in England. He pursued PhD there, but it took him 6 years to complete as he faced a lot of health issues during this period.
Though living in England was a great experience for him, he had to live alone in the college hostel. He found it challenging but he was lucky to get a great supervisor who supported him in his endeavours. As he found it hard to get people to read for him there, he learned how to use the computer and became adept at it.
After completing his doctorate degree, Dr. Hemachandran returned to his motherland to contribute to society. For a short stint, he went to Delhi where he taught at St. Stephens College and also worked as a research fellow.
He applied for teaching jobs in Chennai and got selected by IIT, Madras to teach English Literature as well as Disability Studies. He is now an Associate Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences in IIT, Madras.
Dr. Hemachandran has published a number of peer reviewed essays in academic portals and books. He also co-edits the global section of the journal Review of Disability Studies.
Last year, he founded an Accessibility Research Centre (ARC) that is funded by CSR and is a principle investigator here. Dr. Hemachandran along with his fellow co-investigators from IIT Madras, gather high quality teacher tutorials on the theme disabilities and disciplines.
He is a recipient of a fellowship grant from the Indian Foundation for Arts. With this grant, he pursued a collaborative research project on the theme of theological accessibility.
Dr. Hemachandran was one of the principal investigators of a global project on Covid and mental health organized by Ohio State University.
He is now busy with a book on Disability Studies that he is co-authoring with a colleague Shilpa Anand. The book will be released shortly.
Being a friendly person, he enjoys conversing with students and they help him to fine tune his expertise in disability studies, literary criticism as well as comparative musicology. His work involves 8 hours of teaching per week, guiding Phd students and research work.
Plans are on to conduct a Faculty Development Programme for school teachers and NGO’s. Their ideas and recommendations will be taken on how to build and expand Space Science and measures to make higher education easier for students with disabilities.
He is also involved in conducting Sound Sculpting competitions for school children. He has plans to include Inclusive Schools and Universities too. According to him, it is a fabulous experience and competitions are slated to be held later this year.
Apart from his work that keeps him busy throughout the day, he plays the violin especially Western Music during his free time and enjoys it a lot. He appreciates comedy and derives a lot of happiness talking with friends and family.
Despite being a visually impaired professor, Dr. Hemachandran has been achieving laurels and professional milestones. He has proved that a person’s disability does not limit one’s potential for success.
Juliana Sridhar is a lawyer and columnist
