The Norwegian version of this article published on 15 March 2023 is here https://www.nytid.no/%EF%BF%BCbarnevernets-kulturelle-fordommer/?fbclid=IwAR1N9cC4gxE2Fw95sK_9BxMBD-FqyOCpiezskSNWj_nmzm9bdpeYfQOCF2M

Below is the English original of this article:

The story of the Bhattacharya children, whose removal by Stavanger child services raised a public outcry in India over a decade ago, is back in the news. The reason is the imminent release of a film, Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway. The film is based on a memoir written by Sagarika Chakraborty, the mother of the Bhattacharya children. It stars a major Indian film star, Rani Mukerji.

Ten years ago, after reading in the press about the Bhattacharya case, I joined the campaign started by Member of Parliament, Brinda Karat, to get the children back. The Indian Government intervened, and eventually the children were returned to Sagarika.

Gunnar Toresen, who was chief of the Stavanger child services at the time, has responded to news of the movie with various statements about what happened ten years ago. Obviously, officials involved in the case will defend their actions. But digging up claims made ten years ago about the Bhattacharyas, is not sufficient to answer the questions that arise in reference to the case today.

The most pressing of these questions is how to reckon with the fact that the children have done so well being raised by their mother and maternal grandparents in India for the last ten years. All this time they have grown up in full view of their community, teachers, doctors and friends.

So, except for its most dogged supporters, there is more than a little basis to question whether Barnevernet got it right about the Bhattacharya family all those years ago.

For the last ten years, Sagarika has raised her children by herself. Barnevernet fell like a sledgehammer on the family, breaking the parents apart. When confronted by a bully, some submit, and others fight back. Barnevernet took great advantage of this opposition in the attitude of the parents, to play up tensions between them.

The result was that Sagarika, who had expected to live her life as a housewife, suddenly found herself alone, and the sole breadwinner of two small children. She rallied brilliantly, earning degrees in software engineering and business management. Her parents unstintingly supported her as she worked for these qualifications. She has now been working for several years at a multinational software corporation.

This shows Sagarika’s strength of character. It shows her ability to rise above difficulties. This is the mother that Barnevernet wanted to deprive of her children on claims that she was unable to cope.

Barnevernet also claimed that Sagarika was “unstable”. We now have ten years of experience to show that Sagarika is perfectly stable. Indeed, she is a very high-functioning and impressive young lady.

There is a profound lesson to be learnt from the resilience of Sagarika in the face of adversity. Have welfare societies forgotten what people can achieve for themselves? It is one thing to decide to help others in need, but to see the needy as utterly incapable, even of raising their own children, is a very disturbing eccentricity of welfare societies. In country after country in the First World, it is almost exclusively the poor and vulnerable whose children are confiscated by child welfare agencies. Is this the price that the West is exacting for welfare measures?

Toresen and others claim, wrongly. that the Bhattacharyas have political connections in India. The parents come from simple backgrounds, with no great wealth or connections. India may not have the massive welfare systems of developed countries, but for this very reason there is a culture among politicians of the Left, such as Brinda Karat, to always give an ear to anyone who comes knocking on the door for help. Mahatma Gandhi fought for Independence in the name of the farmer and the labourer. The political intervention for Sagarika has to be seen in context of the legacy bestowed on India by Gandhi that it is the duty of her leaders to take up the cause of the weak and less fortunate.

Instead of blindly supporting Barnevernet, Norwegians could take the episode with the Bhattacharya children as a lesson in what is lost when individual human engagement is replaced by a faceless (and heartless) bureaucracy.

In her memoir, Sagarika raises some very serious issues of cultural bias on the part of Barnevernet case workers. In one riveting scene, Sagarika describes how the English-origin case worker tells her that it was the British who civilised India, and that Indians were “running around naked” before they came. Sagarika blazed forth with a lecture on Rabindranath Tagore. A testy exchange followed that sealed the case workers’ dislike of Sagarika.

The case workers had no idea of the Bengal Tiger that is unleashed at the slightest hint of an affront to their culture in a Bengali. Tagore was a towering Bengali Freedom Fighter and polymath from the turn of the last century. His oeuvre ranged from poetry and drama to philosophy and art. He was a Nobel laureate.

Tagore is the brightest, but certainly not the lone star, in the firmament of Bengali cultural and intellectual achievement.

Bengalis, perhaps more than any other type of Indian, have a profound sense of their place in history and of their contribution to the culture, not just of India, but of the world. Satyajit Ray was an internationally renowned Bengali filmmaker in the serious film genre. His films won awards at Venice and Cannes.

I used to wonder how Sagarika pulled off such a big actress as Rani Mukerji for her film. But when I saw the trailer, Rani’s motivation spoke from every scene.

It is clear that the Bengali in Rani Mukerji was roused by the sneering attitude of the insular Barnevernet case workers. The production is a ringing assertion of Bengaliness and makes its point especially evocatively in Rani’s beautifully curated Dhakai saris. I am not going to explain what those are – it is time that Norway makes the effort to learn just what India is.

When I first heard of Sagarika’s case, I was reminded of a story about Satyajit Ray’s film, Pather Panchali, The film is about a pair of siblings in a village. In one scene, the sister steals a pickle and runs out to the field enjoy it with her brother. They sit on their haunches on the ground and roll up the pickle with their fingers, dabbing at the sour treat with the tips of their tongues in a very Indian way. When this internationally awarded film was shown to the public in England, two English biddies walked out at this scene saying that it was “disgusting”. I will leave the readers with this story.

Suranya Aiyar is a writer and activist.