The vexed saga of the two Bhattacharya children, Aishwarya and Abhigyan, taken away in May 2011 from their Indian parents by Norway’s Child Welfare Agency, (Barnevernet) has been bedevilled by too much irrational attention and confused debate, especially in India.
Currently, it is clear that the children’s fate cannot now be made dependent on the family’s flip-flops – whether it is the father wanting a separation from his wife and then denying such a move soon after, or the uncle wanting custody of the kids and then declining it. Regardless of a possible reconciliation between parents, certain facts emerge.
One, domestic violence clearly wracked this family. Two, extensive counselling of the parents clearly establishes that Barnevernet made several efforts to rectify the situation before deciding to remove the children. Three, contrary to much propaganda about ‘a culturally insensitive’ Norwegian agency acting wilfully, the children were placed with another Indian couple in Norway. In fact, according to reports, the uncle of the children (who was to be later given custody) appears to be of the view that the children were happier in this foster home. And yet, akin to the split which occurs between good and bad in the psyche, Indian public discourse soon got polarised: 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 our authorities, who have a penchant for disclosing names of minors even in cases of rape, Barnevernet did not waiver from keeping the best interests of the children central to their decisions, and did not disclose details citing confidentiality. Details available now appear to have spilled out as a result of proceedings initiated by the father of the children to separate from the mother.
There are certain universal aspects to the growth of a child. And then there are others aspects of child rearing which are more culture specific – whether babies should sleep in separate cots or bedrooms, for instance. And different societies have evolved varied practices that they have each come to consider as ‘necessary’ for healthy child rearing. These cultural practices seem designed to mould the growing child to fit in, with the least amount of friction, into a community’s specific habitat, while also helping it learn to abide by the norms in a particular society.
Each culture would also exhibit traits that to most ‘outsiders’ would appear to range from the idiosyncratic to the downright harmful. 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’s face takes place (at around eight months) and that 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. Providing assistance and therapy to a distressed and possibly disturbed mother in an alien environment would also be a step in the interests of the children. Moreover, 12, 500 children have been taken away by this agency. In a small country like Norway (population: 4. 88 million) that does seem to indicate some preference for such action as a favoured solution. Such a large number of children in care is indeed worrying, more so as it involves a disproportionate number of immigrant families. This does seem to indicate that Barnevernet, in turn, may need to consider mechanisms to incorporate greater cultural sensitivity.
