The vexed saga of the two Bhattacharya children Aishwarya and Abhigyan, taken away in May 2011 from their Indian parents by the Norwegian Child Welfare Agency, (Barnevernet) created unprecedented uproar with protests outside the Norwegian Embassy in New Delhi. Such were the extent of passions which raged that the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of India contacted their counterparts in Norway seeking their intervention in the matter of the custody of the two children.
Akin to the split which occurs between good and bad in the psyche, Indian public discourse soon got polarized: between constructs of our ‘warm, perfect’ Indian versus ‘flawed, cold’ Norwegian (read Western) child rearing practices. At various levels – individual, community and even as a nation – actually accepting the ‘bad’ in us is mostly distressing. It often gets split and then projected onto an ‘other’. Across the board, it is easier for such ‘others’ – Shudra for Brahmin, the Jew for the German, Muslim for Hindu – to become repositories of dirt; or the targets of murderous rage.
In sharp contrast to Indian authorities who have a penchant of disclosing names of minors even in cases of rape, it is a great credit that despite tremendous public pressure and vilification of Norway, Barnevernet did not waiver from keeping the best interests of the children central to their decisions and did not disclose details citing confidentiality. The details available now appear to be a result of proceedings initiated by the father of the children to separate from the mother.
The fact of domestic violence in the family emerged. Extensive counseling of parents, established the efforts made by Barnevernet, before taking a decision to remove the children from the parents. Contrary to the propaganda of a culturally insensitive Norwegian Agency, placing the children with an Indian couple in Norway speaks for itself. In fact, according to reports the uncle of the children who was later given custody, took the view that the children were happier in the foster home.
The reality of the warm Indian family culture co-exists with the findings of the Government survey backed by the UN Children’s Fund that over 50% children faced child sexual abuse in India. Along with pampering and indulgence is the reality of the recently released findings of the National Commission for Child Rights that over 90% children are caned and slapped in schools in India.
There are certain universal aspects to the growth a baby, such as ravenous hunger which is satisfied by feeding. And then there are others aspects of child rearing practices which are culture specific, whether babies should sleep in separate cots or bedrooms, for instance. There is lot of middle ground between the two ends of the spectrum – the minimal requirements like feeding which must happen for the baby to live and the total lack of human touch which must not happen for the baby to not die or be severely stunted. Different societies have evolved varied practices in the middle arena which they consider ‘necessary’ for healthy child rearing. These cultural practices seem designed to shape and mould the growing child to fit in with the least friction into the community’s specific habitat as well as the norms and ways of being for the individual in that particular society.
In the context of autonomy of each society, Indian or Western, rather than evaluation of one society in terms of the other, Kakar (1981) succinctly puts it “I have proceeded, rather, on the assumption that both societies offer distinctive solutions to universal human dilemmas, that both (in secular psychological terminology) have specific normative conceptions of what constitutes the ‘healthy’ personality and of how social relations should be organized to achieve this elusive ideal (p. 6)”.
Each culture has some traits which may look positive and others which appear idiosyncratic, if not harmful, viewed from ‘outside’. Besides, disciplines like modern psychology originated in Western societies, and their insights were understandably affected by the practices of the specific culture in which they evolved. However, many formulations got severed from their original moorings and acquired universal hues. Now, perspectives with regard to growth, mental health, pathology and functioning of the human psyche are increasingly accounting for diverse cultures and societies.
Which is why only a more nuanced view of child rearing – keeping in mind such minimal universal aspects while acknowledging the specific cultural ones – can offer a more constructive way of approaching the issues involved here. For instance, it appears that one-year old Aishwarya did not later recognise her mother. At four weeks, the age at which Aishwarya was taken away, a baby has no conception that there is a person outside of herself who satisfies her needs. It is only gradually that the positive identification and differentiation of the mother takes place and the satisfactions of nursing become associated with her.
Rather than getting caught in tricky conundrums of premising a culture as superior to another, an understanding of early childhood is a more fruitful direction to take in dealing with this issue. Each developmental stage brings for the child attendant anxieties. Anxieties of separation come with attachment to a mother. Similarly, at various ages, fears of being eaten up by monsters or of vanishing down the toilet dog the growing child. Across cultures, we should, as caregivers, look to help the child better deal with anxieties in healthy ways rather than push it into developing distorted coping mechanisms that may lead to more serious disorders.
Such perspectives might have perhaps led the Norwegian child welfare agency to make more efforts to equip the Bhattacharya parents to better deal with the problems they were facing with a possibly autistic child. The Bhattacharya mother, probably a young woman cocooned in the extended Indian family, married off to a comparative stranger, suddenly found herself in an unfamiliar culture. Tense and distressed by anxieties, fears and inadequacies as an individual and as a mother, her capacity to carry out the primary parenting figure’s function may well have been affected. This primary function is what Winnicott speaks of as ‘holding’ the baby in the sense of containing the feelings the infant seems to find intolerable until the child gradually learns to understand and contain his own feelings . Providing assistance and therapy to a distressed and possibly disturbed mother living in an alien environment would also be a step in the interests of the children.
References
Kakar, S (1981). The Inner World, A Psycho-analytic Study of Childhood and Society in India. India: Oxford University Press.
