Darling of a Pigmy Size: Parenting, Child Care and Child-at-Risk
Aryak Guha The Image-Event “A two and a half year old boy banging his head on the floor whenever he sees his mother is a very disturbing scene, but that is precisely what Abhigyan Bhattacharya used to do, forcing the Norwegian authorities to take him and his sister Aishwarya into their custody.” Thus starts an article published in The Hindustan Times (27th April, 2012, e-paper), a newspaper owned by the largest mass media conglomerate in India[1], reporting on the recent controversy surrounding Abhigyan and Aishwarya Bhattacharya. The Norway-based Child Welfare Services (called Barnevernet, afterwards CWS) had taken these kids, ‘minors’ of 2.5/3 and 6 months/1 year[s] (variously reported in newspapers) respectively, into custody in May 2011 citing lack of proper care by their biological parents. National media waxed hysteric on this sensitive issue – call it a ‘scandal’ or heart-rending tale – turned into a daily melodrama with images of distressed, tearful parents and grandparents transmitted ‘live’ or printed on front pages, not to mention the bonny faces of the siblings themselves. Many of these, significantly, were ‘file‘ photographs showing the smiling kids, mostly the son, in the arms of either of the parents (again, more often the father). The high visibility of the whole affair reached a climax of sorts when the then premier citizen of India, Ms. Pratibha Patil, a lawyer and a women’s rights activist herself[2], ‘personally’ stepped in to persuade the Norwegian state authorities to restore the custody of the siblings to their parents. The siblings’ paternal grandparents had personally urged Ms. Patil to look into the matter following what then appeared to be a diplomatic cul-de-sac between two embassies even after repeated requests from Indian authorities including Mr. S. M. Krishna, the Cabinet Minister of External Affairs (reportedly at the exhortation of Mamata Banerjee). The grandpa, appearing on a television channel with tears trickling down his eyes, urged all Indian nationals to provide support in the forlorn quest for his grandchildren, to hold them in his arms again, for nothing less would satisfy his pensive heart – in a manner reminiscent of Subhash Ghai-style lachrymose family saga. Going by the amount of desperate outcries of ‘family-nation(-al)’ citizenry against the ‘brutal’ measures of Norwegian authorities (the profusion with which age-old, stereotypical images of Nordic or Viking warlike barbarians were invoked to collapse with modern charges of racism is for anyone to see), the tears coming from a Hindu Brahmin senior citizen did strike an emotional chord after all, sympathies were duly ‘channelized’, and public pressure piled up to pose a national crisis. So much for tyranny of public emotion on display in the age of reality TV. High-level bureaucratic intervention and constant media glare over what could (or should, as some thought) have been a ‘personal’ affair was assisted by the fact that the NRI Bhattacharya couple, the father a geo-physicist and mother a homemaker, later accused each other of threat to (and even actual) physical assault and launched police diaries/FIRs, drawing in their respective parents in turn. The (paternal) uncle of the kids, chosen by the father as the kids’ rightful guardian in the face of allegation against the biological parents’ incompetence to provide fit benchmarks of rearing, added to the controversy by (apparently) declaring the kids’ then foster-parents (also ethnically Indian) as better candidates (than himself, a kin and doctor by profession) in the matter of parental care. By that point in time, print and electronic media in the two concerned countries (and outside) were being flooded with opinions on both sides of India/Norway and biological/foster parenthood – not to speak of ‘good/bad’ and implied ‘East/West‘ divide that often accompany such passionate public debates – or any permutation of these binaries. The common-sense ‘theory’ of cultural relativism, a familiar but important consideration in these matters – often favoring the parent/-country in this case as a prima facie look at English-language newspaper reports, editorials/op-eds, and exchanges in various blogs available in public domain would confirm[3] – was advanced by Anurup Bhattacharya (the father in question) when he was quoted by various newspapers as saying that the Norwegian authorities enforced their decision ostensibly since the parents fed the siblings by hand (with a probable hint at breast-feeding) and shared bed with them at night, by all means common practices in India/West Bengal. There was a particularly fervent article supporting the Indian case, by then a national cause, on Kafila. The bio-note at the end of this article described the author as “a lawyer and a mother” (with an oblique emphasis) and ended by urging Delhites to join a protest march in front of the Norwegian embassy. An open letter with a similar import has also been published in The Hindu on the last Independence Day, signed by several women dignitaries including ex-MPs and ex-Chairpersons of National Commission for Women. Both of these articles argue, if predictably, along certain Feminist lines placing (somewhat alarmingly) the immediate onus of child-rearing on the mother – here turned into a victim[4]. The latter is directed at two journalists reporting on the incident, accusing them of deliberate misrepresentation of the mother’s plight – not only hinting at having forsaken the nation-state but belied the most powerful imaginary of them all, the mother (or the act of ‘mothering’). For everyone familiar with the late 19th century Hindu cultural resurgence gaining necessary historical/historicist legitimacy in the context of anti-colonial struggle, this moral plea directs us toward a bad infinity. The ‘Nature’ of Nurture Parenting/Parenthood in an age of sperm, egg or womb donation and single or same-sex parents has become a jumbled affair on the whole. Things in India are, however, not so baffling – the transition of ‘joint’ family to nuclear units is pretty much the last important thing to have happened to the formally educated, white collar middle class. Hence, multiple models of parenting – social/communal (erstwhile joint family), legal (adoption), biological and moral – rarely appear exclusive of each other although single parent is an