3 THE METANARRATIVE OF BLINDNESS IN INDIA Special education and assumed knowledge cultures Hemachandran Karah Preliminary discussion Schools for the blind in India deeply influence the career choices of their pupils; they do this via a metanarrative that establishes a natural (or otherwise) connec- tion between blindness and several disciplines. The metanarrative commands assumed authority over blind people, especially within locations where they come into contact with disciplinary formations at the cutting edge. For example, the following impressions shape blind people’s mobility across the social sciences, the humanities, and the sciences: 1. Fieldworks entail visual engagements, and therefore social sciences cannot take blind people that far. 2. Due to its interpretative verbiage, humanities may remain forever a natural home for the blind. 3. Sciences are hard for blind people since they will be required to gather an observational eye for precision and mechanical objectivity. No doubt, ocularnormativism (Bolt, 2014) drives such impressions. All the same, a stamp of authenticity by special schools pushes such normative leanings into assumptions of authority – namely, an assortment of unwritten rules and practi- cal decisions that shape blind people’s life courses across knowledge domains. In this chapter, I look back at moments of authenticity-making during my stay in an Indian blind school.The metanarrative generated by such schools prior to glo- balization of the 1990s still shapes, almost automatically, blind people’s disciplinary mobility.This is certainly true for my generation.