The Indian Express | 1 week ago | 18-03-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Norwegian Ambassador has responded to the Rani Mukherjee-starrer, Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway, with a very sober attempt to put the record straight. But, begging His Excellency’s pardon, the film is not a generalised attack on his country. It deals with a specific real-life case of an Indian immigrant’s infants being abducted by the Norwegian child protection services on trivial grounds. The story then goes on to recount how, with the intervention of the Indian foreign minister and the efforts of an Indian lawyer, the children were restored to the mother and how they are now being brought up by the mother, happy and normal. This is a case study of how the best of intentions can go wrong if entrusted to a bureaucracy with excessive powers unchecked by other organs of state. That the India case study illustrates what is wrong with the Norwegian child protection services, in particular, and western child protection services, in general, is testified to by the fact that numerous deprived parents of Indian and east European origins in all parts of western Europe and, indeed, in Norway itself, and in the United States, have been turning to the Indian lawyer for help, which she extends pro bono. In consequence, the Nordic Human Rights Council has made her a Laureate. In the events that follow the screening of the film, affected persons of Norwegian and other foreign origin have gathered in New Delhi for a seminar at the IIC today and a dastangoi, directed by Mahmood Farooqui, next day.While the film is about a specific case, it points to systemic deficiencies that need urgent rectification. Where the Norwegian Ambassador goes wrong is in claiming “factual inaccuracies” that he does not elaborate. Instead, the facts on which the film is based are conveniently ducked with the argument that the case “was resolved a decade ago in cooperation with the Indian authorities”. What the Ambassador does not mention is that the Indian authorities intervened only after the matter was taken up by an Indian MP (Brinda Karat) and the Indian lawyer. There is no other intervention on record to suggest that this is standard practice for the Indian foreign office. Thus, the film’s message is directed as much at the Indian authorities as the Norwegian. With the growing number of NRIs, there is a need for legislation in India that would compel intervention by the Indian government with child protection services in the West that routinely take away Indian infants on flimsy pretexts. The issue also includes cases of east European children and their families, and, perhaps more numerous, Norwegian children, as highlighted by the presence at the New Delhi events of a Norwegian father who was deprived of his child by a second marriage despite his four elder adult children by his first wife testifying to his redeeming qualities.The Ambassador says he has “beautiful memories of the time my children were growing up”. These included “feeding them with my hands”. He was lucky he did not suffer the surveillance of the English social worker in Stavanger, Norway, who told Sagarika, the Indian mother, that Indians were “barbarians” who “ran around naked” until the British civilised them, and that she knew how Indian families treated their children as she had seen Slumdog Millionaire! Despite clear evidence that the case worker was quite untrained and unfit for the sensitive tasks given to her, the Norwegian child welfare institutions ranging up to and including the judiciary stood four-square behind her. It was only intervention at the level of the Indian foreign minister that enabled the children to be repatriated to the extended family in India. The Indian lawyer then arranged through the Indian judiciary for the infants to be reunited with their mother. And the proof that the Indian judiciary scored over the Norwegian judiciary is that ten years later the children are living with their mother in obvious contentment and happiness. If Norway will not accept the wider dimensions of this case and look into the implementation on the ground of its laws on child protection, these wider implications will have to be stressed and repeated in the interest of not only immigrant families but of Norwegian parents too.This is especially because scientific studies in Norway and other western countries have established conclusively that children in foster care suffer psychological issues on a scale far larger than is the case of children brought up by their families. I suggest the Ambassador draw the attention of his authorities to these studies as he is quite right in asserting that “a mother’s love in Norway is no different from a mother’s love in India”. That is the precise reason why it is as much in the interests of Norwegian parents as of Non-Resident Indian parents to look into the evident flaws in the implementation of child protection laws and the laws themselves. It is not constructive to indulge in the hyperbole that the film will make Indians think of Norwegians as “cold-blooded tyrants”. A little introspection on the dire humanitarian consequences of misplaced confidence in the present system would be in order. The ambassador claims that “neither the Ministry nor the Minister can intervene in a case” — but that is precisely what they did in the Sagarika Bhattacharya case, with the most beneficial consequences for India and Norway. The Ambassador admits, “the experience was traumatic” but describes the film as a “fictional representation” when, in fact, it is based on an autobiography penned by the mother who underwent the traumatic experience.We need an honest dialogue with western powers on this burning human rights issue, not self-serving defences of the “official Norwegian perspective”. Or take back the Laureate awarded to the Indian lawyer.Disclosure: The Indian lawyer is my daughter, Suranya Aiyar.The writer is a former Union minister
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