IMPORTANT POINT
The court mandated that inquiries under Order XXXII, Rule 15 of the CPC are essential for hard-of-hearing litigants seeking representation through a Next Friend to ensure their interests are protected.

JUDGMENT :

Devan Ramachandran, J.

As we begin, we notice that this Original Petition describes the respondent to be “Deaf and Dumb”. We find it necessary and requisite to impress that the afore description is a relic from the medieval era.

2. The Greek Philosopher Aristotle used the phrase to refer to hard-of-hearing people and argued that they were incapable of being taught; of learning; and of reasoned thinking (source:Deaf Heritage, by Jack Gannon, 1980)

3. In later years “dumb” came to mean silent, but remained offensive because it also connotes cognitive disablement - stemming from the illusion that if one cannot use voice, you are probably not smart.

4. The terms afore are ethically and technically inaccurate; and now recognised internationally to be offensive - particularly by the community. The term “Hearing-impaired” is also no longer accepted, though it was earlier preferred, as being politically correct. This was a well meaning term, but now not accepted because ‘impaired’ means hindered or damaged.

5. The most accepted terms now are ‘deaf’ and ‘hard-of-hearing’; and we will use only them in this judgment.

6. Hard - of - hearing communities are diverse, with people identifying as Deaf, Deaf- Blind, Deaf - Disabled and Late- Deafened. How people identify themselves is personal and may reflect the degree to which they can hear, or the relative age of onset. For example, those who became deaf later in life may identify themselves as Late- Deafened; while those with vision loss to some degree also, may define themselves as ‘Deaf Blind’.

7. It is to be remembered that with all the technological advances of these times, including surgical Cochlear implants, Audio Converters, Sign to text Converters, lip reading converters, etc., the larger number of the hard-of-hearing commence their life in school under grave disadvantages, which are - most often - imperfectly represented as being ignorant of language.

8. A few centuries prior, hard-of- hearing persons had been treated as though they were cognitively impaired. This probably stemmed from early theories linking intelligence with spoken language and because most early learning - as well as the transmission of cultural and traditional knowledge - was accomplished orally. Axiomatically, persons who were hard-of- hearing and consequently unable to verbally communicate, were invariably excluded from educational opportunities by the prevailing culture; and thereby reduced to being with few, if no, civil rights.

9. Fortunately, by about the 16th century, society’s view began to change. The Spanish monk, Pedro Ponce de Le’on, established the World's first school for the deaf at the monastery of San Salvio near Madrid. He developed methods to teach reading, writing and speaking to persons who were hard-of-hearing, in order to prepare them to lead a normal life. His methods laid the foundation for the development of the sign languages - now the predominant manual languages in contemporary culture.

10. The work of de Le’on was broadened and extended during the 18th Century by Charles Michel de l’Epee, who established a public school for deaf students in France in 1771. He is also credited with writing the first French sign language dictionary.

11. In 1817, Thomas Gallaudut, an American Theologian, along with a French teacher by name Laurent Clerc, founded the first American School for the deaf; and translated the French sign language for the use of American students.

12. The old feudal rules of the English Common Law, as also applicable to most of Europe, did not grant the deaf the same rights of inheritance as others; and were then afforded only upon proof of want of requisite intelligence. As to what would be deemed satisfactory proof of intelligence, there was evidently room for diversity of opinion, but by the march of time such ruleshave now faded away.

13. To possess a language is to articulate ideas; to own a machinery to combine thoughts and exhibit their relations to each other. Every spe