Dear Friends: The following letter, reproduced, points out how nationalities can differ in parenting a child. It appeared in the daily Telegraph,UK, this morning.
-bhuban By Dean Nelson, New Delhi. The parents were told the children will remain in foster care in Norway until they are 18 and that they will only have occasional contact with them. Norwegian officials have so far resisted calls for the children to be reunited with their grandparents in India pending an inquiry, and now India's external affairs minister has called for the children to be repatriated. The case has provoked an outcry in India, where mothers constantly push food into their toddlers' mouths and children often sleep in their parents' bed until they are six or seven. Sushma Swaraj, parliamentary leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, suggested the decision betrayed an ignorance of Indian culture. "I do not know the logic behind the Norwegian laws. One thing is clear – they do not know the Indian culture and sensibilities. The snatching of two little kids from their parents in Norway is shocking. I cannot imagine what parents and kids must be going through," she said. 28 Mar 2011 China's fury over Nobel Prize for 'criminal' 08 Oct 2010 "If feeding a child by hand or a child sleeping with parents is an offence, then all Indian parents including me are guilty of this. The first principle of parenting is that a child should sleep with parents to instil in the child a sense of security." She said Indians took their parenting lessons from the story of Lord Ganesh, the elephant-headed God, whose human head was turned to ashes by a rival as he was being held in his mother's arms. "We Indian mothers cannot sleep with our back to our kids," she added. Norwegian child protection officers in Stavanger regarded these practices as evidence that their mother and father were unfit parents and took them into care last May after the elder child, exhibited behavioural problems in school. They began visiting the family last year after their four year old son began behaving 'erratically' in class for an hour each week. They decided the children's mother, Sagarika Chakraborty was suffering from 'depression', was 'tired' and had little 'patience.' She was 'overfeeding' the children and they were concerned that the boy Abhigyan, aged three, was sleeping with his father. The father, Anurup Bhattarcharya, a senior geoscientist, told a television channel he had appealed to the Indian government to requisition Norway's King to intervene, because Norwegian officials were unsympathetic. "The children's mother is mentally fit. The day's are passing quickly and we ask the government to speed up the process to get back our kids," he said. The mother's father Manotosh Chakraborty last night told The Daily Telegraph the decision to take the children into care was "cruel". "The way the parents were caring about their children is perfectly normal as per our social norms. In fact that's how we brought up their mother," he said. The head of Stavanger's Child Welfare Services, Gunnar Toresen, denied cultural differences were a factor in its decision. "I most strongly deny that this case in any way is based on cultural prejudice or misinterpretation. I am unable to give any comments regarding the particular grounds in this case because of our duty of confidentiality _______________________________________________ assam mailing list [email protected] http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
