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MARRIAGE CONFERENCE
Efforts have been made by Drishti Institution for the social rehabilitation of visually impaired people for their marriage since 2001. While working in this direction, the organization came to know that society is completely indifferent to the matter of the marriage of visually impaired people even though they are capable, both in terms of financial and physical means, of taking up the responsibility of the union. Many times, the reason behind this remains the doubt that their child might also be a handicap. However, it has been scientifically proven that visual impairment is not hereditary. Despite the assurance, people are still scared because of some cases wherein the offspring were born with low or total vision impairment.
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Another reason for parents to not wed their visually impaired child is because they want to use their independent child's income for their own interest. Also, in some cases, the visually impaired themselves don't want to get married because they don't want to live away from their family.
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Under the social rehabilitation program, first of all, we started an awareness campaign among our visually impaired brothers and sisters. A tradition was started wherein we held a 1-day introduction conference twice a year. At the conference, we call visually impaired men and women in their marriageable age along with their families and make them have a constructive conversation. Before finalizing any pair we make sure that consent has been taken from both families.
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The financial stability of the couple is our top priority for marriage. Apart from this, we take care of other criteria like equality in social status, religion, caste etc. While these things might sound outdated in the modernized world, they are very much relevant in rural India. Hence to ensure that the couple is safe from society stigmas we consider these criteria.
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After a couple meets all of the criteria, their nuptials take place inside the institution itself, involving a lot of celebrations.
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All of the rituals are properly performed during the marriage so that the pair can remember this special moment.
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We are honored to say that we have successfully married 46 couples in our institution. However, this number is not enough. Society needs to show support for this number to increase and for visually impaired couples to lead a respectable life.