The husband comes out later confirming they had marital problems due to stress and perinatal depression causing the woman to abuse the children. The woman later went home to India and kidnap the children.
Transcript for those who might not be able to read this easily:
A NEW MOVIE, *Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway*, hit the big screen on Friday. The film is a powerful and emotional story about an Indian mother fighting for the custody of her children in Norway. Given Rani Mukerji’s acting prowess it is difficult to remain unmoved by it, and movie-goers might come out thinking of Norway as an uncaring country. But as the Norwegian Ambassador to Indian, it is important for me to present the official Norwegian perspective and corret factual inaccuraies that this film unfortunately portrays.
The case that the movie is inspired by was resolved a decade ago in cooperation with Indian authorties and an agreement between all the parties involved. This movie is a fictional representation of the case.
Child welfare case are not easy. Certainly not for the children, not for the parents and not for the Child Welfare Service tasked with finding the right slution. Alternative care is a matter of great responsibility, and a decision about alternative care will never be motivated by payments or profit.
The film projects cultural differences as the primary factor in the case, which is completely false. Without going into any details of this particular case, I categorically deny that feeding with hands and sleeping in the same bed would be the reason for placing children in alternative care. Not in this case and not in any case.
Yes, we have different cultural practices. Yes, we might have different paranting traditions in Norway. But our human instincts are not different. A mother’s love in Norway is no different from a mother’s love in India.
I, as a far of three, have beautiful memories of the time my children were growing up, of feeding them with my hands, of reading bedtime stories to them as they cuddled and slept in the same bed with us. Therefore, ti becomes unfathomable to me when I see a repeat of false narratives. It worries me to imagine that our Indian friends will think of us Norwegians as cold-hearted tyrants, which we are decidedly not.
I take pride in the system that I represent, where we are constantly eager to learn from experience and listen to criticism. Child welfare cases are often complex, but the best interest of the child is always the paramount principle in all the work.
Parents have the primary responsibility for rasing their children and it is the Norwegian view that children primarily should grow up with their parents. The Child Welfare Service can only intervene when neglect, violence or abuse is confirmed.
The fundamental principle of child welfare in Norway is to safeguard the best interest of the child.This principle is strongly reflected in our laws and constitution and is based on our obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. When the rights of a child conflit with the interests of the parents, the rights of the child are to take precedence.
Norway is a democratic, multicultural society. In Norway, we value and respect different family systems and cultural practices, also when these are different to what we are accustomed to. But we have zero tolerance for violence in any shape or form. An occasional slap, however, will not automatically leads to the removal of the child from its family. In such cases, the parents will be offered help and guidance from the child welfare service on other parenting practices that benefit the child. The Norwegian Child Welfare Act applies to all children in the realm regardless of their ethnic background, nationality, or religious beliefs.
The Norwegian authorities have a statutory duty of confidentiality and protection of privacy in all child protection cases. To protect the children and their right to privacy the government will not comment on a specific case. Neither the Ministry nor the Minister can intervene in a case.
Now, to the cultural debate. I have been posted to Indian for nearly four years now. I have experienced first-hand the deep-rooted pride Indians take in their culture and heritage, and rightly so. Multiculturalism and tolerance are at the herat of the Indian nation. This is an example to follow.
There are presently over 20,000 Indians living in Norway. Indians make up the highest number of immigrant workers in Norway outside of the EU and contribute to our econimic, social and cultural growth. Annual events such as the Bollywood festival Norway, Oslo Durga Puja and the Mela festival are popular features.
I sincerely hope this movie will not discourage Indians from coming to Norway. I hope this film will be seen for what it is, and I trust the viewers to understand that this is a fictionaly representation. For those involved, there is no denying that the experience was traumatic.
Therefore, I hope that when Indians think of Norway, you can also focus on the godo story, our common belief in the value of family life and appreciate what Norway and India have achieved together with years of fmutual understanding and respect.
Is this needed?
What next? An explanation pointing out factual inaccuracies in the movie ‘Troll’.
The movie is just another ‘low qualitt soap’ produced by an industry (Bollywood) that churns out trash after trash every year from a country drowning in propaganda.
Please ignore it. These media attention will serve as an advertisement for the movie and make it a success back in India.
By the way, the other side of the story or the truth will never come out because the authorities are bound by confidentiality terms.
It’s a well written opinion piece.
As a Norwegian living in US I have learned to appreciate even more the emphasis Norway has on protecting the child.
Children are not mere chattel belonging to the parents; they are people with rights.
Tldr?
Is thats why UN gave deceisions aganist them several times. Both VG and AP did an investigative rapport where they found out that the people working in barneverent at that time were also owners of companies who receive the children from barnevern and there was an incident where an owner of such company was receiving conplain aganist his company in barnevern. So the privat profiters earned a lot of money in these cases and thats how the whole thing started. Dont take my word for it, search online and find the articles along with the raw data and rapports, it would make your blodd boil how these people had used norwegian tax money and damaged family system just to earn profit. Dosent mean that people working there are breaking internarional laws but there is a systematic problem which needs to be addressed.
Edit:
Just for info, i am not defending any1 here, just stating the facts that the barnevern system is broken and has many problem specially when private actors come in to get out super profit.
I didn’t even know about this movie until I saw this.
The same religious nationalistic bullshit that is taking place in the US is also taking place in India as Modi takes a page from the slow slide towards fascism playbook. These films that try to badmouth others and put India on a pedestal are part of that strategy.
This is such a touchy subject. I’d really like to think that all these cases didnt happen and are misunderstandings.
As a father of three I have read up on a few of the cases and I can’t imagine how helpless and hopeless the parents must have felt fighting against such a massive state bureaucracy.
While most people would likely have a positive experience dealing with Child Protective Services, not all are entertained with that privilege. Their reputation is being distorted, but it has not come out of nowhere, with judgements against Norway in European Court on CPS cases.
Every government service with power to potentially upend someones life needs scrutiny in order to improve.
Tried arguing with some Indians only to realise the they thought it was the parents right to beat children.
Let’s just say women was mentally unstable, but still was it really a good idea to take her breast feeding child?? For whom she fought for so long even despite being mentally unstable. Sould have kept her and her child in a safe area until child grow up a little and become selfaware if they actually cared.
People who r defending there nation, i don’t have any problem with that.
Atleast you can acknowledge what happened was really messed up and should never happen with any mother of this world. Even if the mother is completely insane still don’t take there children away (until she isn’t harming the child through different attack) keep both in proper watch if u care or left them alone if u don’t care .
I’m British Indian, and as someone who’s trying to move to Norway permanently, I’m really glad this was written. It’s interesting to me how many people I’ve talked to that have this inherent mental bias that people that aren’t Indian don’t share the same love for their kids as Indian parents/people do, I find it so damn insulting to basically every single person that treats their kids and family brilliantly. Indian culture can be a bit of an echo chamber sometimes.
Yeah I’m Indian, but I’m just as much British, and I’ve been adopting Norwegian culture as well the past couple of years, so I find that movies (or anything really) that, let’s be real a lot of people may take at face value, that just blatantly takes the truth of what happened away and tries to make it into some kind of “India good, other countries bad” dynamic just makes me annoyed.
as an Indian, I’m ashamed of our movies. At least a majority of movies, if not all. No sane government wants to take kids away from parents. The public (government) has to foot the bill in these cases. And like he explained in the letter, it’s never that simple a reason for government to intervene. So take a movie for what it is. Entertainment.
The child care reacted to the fact that the parents fed the child by hands and not spoon. That’s a fact. And that’s just cultural. But that’s of course not all. Bollywood never makes documantaries, its only drama.
So there is one thing I’ve never quite understood about barnevernet cases where the parents say they have been wronged, and maybe someone with more knowledge can explain?:
Aren’t these cases eventually (or at least if the parents want to?) taken to court, where there will be judges and lawyers that will see the evidence or hear from witnesses? Do the parents not get any court documents with transcript and evidence/statements?
The officials can’t comment on the cases or show proof, but if the parents have all the documents too, and they are so sure they are innocent, why not publish it themselves? **So are they actually not given these documents from court, or do the parents not post it anywhere because they are lying?** Or something else?
(Edit- to be clear I’m not specifically asking about this case, but more in general)
>”It worries me to imagine that our Indian friends will think of us Norwegians as cold-hearted tyrants, which we are decidedly not”
No offense, Hans Jacob, but if you were to have denied.. I don’t know.. raising Hitler from the dead to put him in as a case-manager in the Child Protective services — that line is still going to make you sound suspicious. “I can categorically deny that we employ Hitler!”. Really, Hans Jacob? Are you employing Göering, then? Why are you so evasive?
Let me apologise on behalf of our civil service employees, who all seem to have gone to the same “I am stating my opinion with great sincerity, as a human, from the same planet as you, beep boop”-writing course for public servants. Our child protective services do indeed have an astonishingly dark history, if we go back to the early 80s and further back. And it is not outside the realm of what is believable that we would find many cases – even if it may not have been so in this specific case – where behaviour that would be seen as normal if done by a white Norwegian (or any white person, really), would be seen as astonishing and problematic if it was done by a person who is not obviously European and white.
The converse is also true: These are anecdotal examples, of course, but this exact behaviour happened in more than one case I know of from my hometown, where had what was being done to the children in question been at the hands of an immigrant, the children would have been put in a foster-home instantly. Other difficulties exist in similar circumstances during divorces, where children are put in exclusive custody on the directions of the partner that has an interest in depicting the situation as if they escaped a terrible and violent man, etc. Which is perhaps what was the background for this case, given the various explanations that have been pushed through in the media in the last couple of weeks. These cases can be formally sound, and can withstand any amount of scrutiny of the case-files – and behind it lies a tragedy where two unfit parents have attempted to blame the other parent for what is basically child-abuse. The outcome of these cases might not even be the fault of the case-manager, in a sense – but only of their willingness to believe the most insistent and emotionally delivered explanations of the events.
Meanwhile, cutting funding of child protective services has been a theme going through several governments in a row, along with the usual political ridiculousness of how encouraging more traditional family values will solve all of these problems (at least the visible ones, so that we can go back to the good old days in the 1800s, or something, when women were happy to not vote, fix things at home, and not kill themselves in desparation all that often. Presumably we are having many research missions sent to the outskirts of Indian villages for inspiration).
That being said, child protective servies are necessary, and it is like Hans Jacob says, that the threshold for taking action is set extremely high for taking children away from their parents. Admittedly we have prominent recent examples of asylum seekers being separated from their parents as children cannot (yet) be thrown out of the country without an application process, but parents can. And there are grey areas where divorced parents might have problems medically or psychologically for a period, and then will be found to need help taking care of their kids. This is still horrible, but it is perhaps less horrible than the alternatives.
Denying categorically that we forcibly separate children from their parents is in other words not very believable. Although I know it does not happen often, and that there will be very difficult underlying (and private) complications involved whenever it happens.
19 comments
The husband comes out later confirming they had marital problems due to stress and perinatal depression causing the woman to abuse the children. The woman later went home to India and kidnap the children.
Transcript for those who might not be able to read this easily:
A NEW MOVIE, *Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway*, hit the big screen on Friday. The film is a powerful and emotional story about an Indian mother fighting for the custody of her children in Norway. Given Rani Mukerji’s acting prowess it is difficult to remain unmoved by it, and movie-goers might come out thinking of Norway as an uncaring country. But as the Norwegian Ambassador to Indian, it is important for me to present the official Norwegian perspective and corret factual inaccuraies that this film unfortunately portrays.
The case that the movie is inspired by was resolved a decade ago in cooperation with Indian authorties and an agreement between all the parties involved. This movie is a fictional representation of the case.
Child welfare case are not easy. Certainly not for the children, not for the parents and not for the Child Welfare Service tasked with finding the right slution. Alternative care is a matter of great responsibility, and a decision about alternative care will never be motivated by payments or profit.
The film projects cultural differences as the primary factor in the case, which is completely false. Without going into any details of this particular case, I categorically deny that feeding with hands and sleeping in the same bed would be the reason for placing children in alternative care. Not in this case and not in any case.
Yes, we have different cultural practices. Yes, we might have different paranting traditions in Norway. But our human instincts are not different. A mother’s love in Norway is no different from a mother’s love in India.
I, as a far of three, have beautiful memories of the time my children were growing up, of feeding them with my hands, of reading bedtime stories to them as they cuddled and slept in the same bed with us. Therefore, ti becomes unfathomable to me when I see a repeat of false narratives. It worries me to imagine that our Indian friends will think of us Norwegians as cold-hearted tyrants, which we are decidedly not.
I take pride in the system that I represent, where we are constantly eager to learn from experience and listen to criticism. Child welfare cases are often complex, but the best interest of the child is always the paramount principle in all the work.
Parents have the primary responsibility for rasing their children and it is the Norwegian view that children primarily should grow up with their parents. The Child Welfare Service can only intervene when neglect, violence or abuse is confirmed.
The fundamental principle of child welfare in Norway is to safeguard the best interest of the child.This principle is strongly reflected in our laws and constitution and is based on our obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. When the rights of a child conflit with the interests of the parents, the rights of the child are to take precedence.
Norway is a democratic, multicultural society. In Norway, we value and respect different family systems and cultural practices, also when these are different to what we are accustomed to. But we have zero tolerance for violence in any shape or form. An occasional slap, however, will not automatically leads to the removal of the child from its family. In such cases, the parents will be offered help and guidance from the child welfare service on other parenting practices that benefit the child. The Norwegian Child Welfare Act applies to all children in the realm regardless of their ethnic background, nationality, or religious beliefs.
The Norwegian authorities have a statutory duty of confidentiality and protection of privacy in all child protection cases. To protect the children and their right to privacy the government will not comment on a specific case. Neither the Ministry nor the Minister can intervene in a case.
Now, to the cultural debate. I have been posted to Indian for nearly four years now. I have experienced first-hand the deep-rooted pride Indians take in their culture and heritage, and rightly so. Multiculturalism and tolerance are at the herat of the Indian nation. This is an example to follow.
There are presently over 20,000 Indians living in Norway. Indians make up the highest number of immigrant workers in Norway outside of the EU and contribute to our econimic, social and cultural growth. Annual events such as the Bollywood festival Norway, Oslo Durga Puja and the Mela festival are popular features.
I sincerely hope this movie will not discourage Indians from coming to Norway. I hope this film will be seen for what it is, and I trust the viewers to understand that this is a fictionaly representation. For those involved, there is no denying that the experience was traumatic.
Therefore, I hope that when Indians think of Norway, you can also focus on the godo story, our common belief in the value of family life and appreciate what Norway and India have achieved together with years of fmutual understanding and respect.
Is this needed?
What next? An explanation pointing out factual inaccuracies in the movie ‘Troll’.
The movie is just another ‘low qualitt soap’ produced by an industry (Bollywood) that churns out trash after trash every year from a country drowning in propaganda.
Please ignore it. These media attention will serve as an advertisement for the movie and make it a success back in India.
By the way, the other side of the story or the truth will never come out because the authorities are bound by confidentiality terms.
It’s a well written opinion piece.
As a Norwegian living in US I have learned to appreciate even more the emphasis Norway has on protecting the child.
Children are not mere chattel belonging to the parents; they are people with rights.
Tldr?
Is thats why UN gave deceisions aganist them several times. Both VG and AP did an investigative rapport where they found out that the people working in barneverent at that time were also owners of companies who receive the children from barnevern and there was an incident where an owner of such company was receiving conplain aganist his company in barnevern. So the privat profiters earned a lot of money in these cases and thats how the whole thing started. Dont take my word for it, search online and find the articles along with the raw data and rapports, it would make your blodd boil how these people had used norwegian tax money and damaged family system just to earn profit. Dosent mean that people working there are breaking internarional laws but there is a systematic problem which needs to be addressed.
Edit:
Just for info, i am not defending any1 here, just stating the facts that the barnevern system is broken and has many problem specially when private actors come in to get out super profit.
https://www.moss-avis.no/regelbruddet-i-barnevernet-var-en-glipp-sier-radmannen-i-moss/s/5-67-857316
https://www.aftenposten.no/norge/i/41yLgG/menneskerettsdomstolen-retten-til-familieliv-er-krenket-i-tre-nye-barnevernssaker
https://www.etterforsker1.no/blog/trude-knuste-barnevern-norge-i-strasbourg/
https://fontene.no/nyheter/eilen-52-er-et-av-1200-enkeltpersonsforetak-som-holder-kommunalt-barnevern-pa-beina-6.339.610474.3a698f1b73
I didn’t even know about this movie until I saw this.
The same religious nationalistic bullshit that is taking place in the US is also taking place in India as Modi takes a page from the slow slide towards fascism playbook. These films that try to badmouth others and put India on a pedestal are part of that strategy.
This is such a touchy subject. I’d really like to think that all these cases didnt happen and are misunderstandings.
As a father of three I have read up on a few of the cases and I can’t imagine how helpless and hopeless the parents must have felt fighting against such a massive state bureaucracy.
While most people would likely have a positive experience dealing with Child Protective Services, not all are entertained with that privilege. Their reputation is being distorted, but it has not come out of nowhere, with judgements against Norway in European Court on CPS cases.
Every government service with power to potentially upend someones life needs scrutiny in order to improve.
Tried arguing with some Indians only to realise the they thought it was the parents right to beat children.
Let’s just say women was mentally unstable, but still was it really a good idea to take her breast feeding child?? For whom she fought for so long even despite being mentally unstable. Sould have kept her and her child in a safe area until child grow up a little and become selfaware if they actually cared.
People who r defending there nation, i don’t have any problem with that.
Atleast you can acknowledge what happened was really messed up and should never happen with any mother of this world. Even if the mother is completely insane still don’t take there children away (until she isn’t harming the child through different attack) keep both in proper watch if u care or left them alone if u don’t care .
I’m British Indian, and as someone who’s trying to move to Norway permanently, I’m really glad this was written. It’s interesting to me how many people I’ve talked to that have this inherent mental bias that people that aren’t Indian don’t share the same love for their kids as Indian parents/people do, I find it so damn insulting to basically every single person that treats their kids and family brilliantly. Indian culture can be a bit of an echo chamber sometimes.
Yeah I’m Indian, but I’m just as much British, and I’ve been adopting Norwegian culture as well the past couple of years, so I find that movies (or anything really) that, let’s be real a lot of people may take at face value, that just blatantly takes the truth of what happened away and tries to make it into some kind of “India good, other countries bad” dynamic just makes me annoyed.
as an Indian, I’m ashamed of our movies. At least a majority of movies, if not all. No sane government wants to take kids away from parents. The public (government) has to foot the bill in these cases. And like he explained in the letter, it’s never that simple a reason for government to intervene. So take a movie for what it is. Entertainment.
https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/mrs-chatterjee-vs-norway-the-real-story-behind-an-indian-mother-s-fight-66230
The child care reacted to the fact that the parents fed the child by hands and not spoon. That’s a fact. And that’s just cultural. But that’s of course not all. Bollywood never makes documantaries, its only drama.
So there is one thing I’ve never quite understood about barnevernet cases where the parents say they have been wronged, and maybe someone with more knowledge can explain?:
Aren’t these cases eventually (or at least if the parents want to?) taken to court, where there will be judges and lawyers that will see the evidence or hear from witnesses? Do the parents not get any court documents with transcript and evidence/statements?
The officials can’t comment on the cases or show proof, but if the parents have all the documents too, and they are so sure they are innocent, why not publish it themselves? **So are they actually not given these documents from court, or do the parents not post it anywhere because they are lying?** Or something else?
(Edit- to be clear I’m not specifically asking about this case, but more in general)
>”It worries me to imagine that our Indian friends will think of us Norwegians as cold-hearted tyrants, which we are decidedly not”
No offense, Hans Jacob, but if you were to have denied.. I don’t know.. raising Hitler from the dead to put him in as a case-manager in the Child Protective services — that line is still going to make you sound suspicious. “I can categorically deny that we employ Hitler!”. Really, Hans Jacob? Are you employing Göering, then? Why are you so evasive?
Let me apologise on behalf of our civil service employees, who all seem to have gone to the same “I am stating my opinion with great sincerity, as a human, from the same planet as you, beep boop”-writing course for public servants. Our child protective services do indeed have an astonishingly dark history, if we go back to the early 80s and further back. And it is not outside the realm of what is believable that we would find many cases – even if it may not have been so in this specific case – where behaviour that would be seen as normal if done by a white Norwegian (or any white person, really), would be seen as astonishing and problematic if it was done by a person who is not obviously European and white.
The converse is also true: These are anecdotal examples, of course, but this exact behaviour happened in more than one case I know of from my hometown, where had what was being done to the children in question been at the hands of an immigrant, the children would have been put in a foster-home instantly. Other difficulties exist in similar circumstances during divorces, where children are put in exclusive custody on the directions of the partner that has an interest in depicting the situation as if they escaped a terrible and violent man, etc. Which is perhaps what was the background for this case, given the various explanations that have been pushed through in the media in the last couple of weeks. These cases can be formally sound, and can withstand any amount of scrutiny of the case-files – and behind it lies a tragedy where two unfit parents have attempted to blame the other parent for what is basically child-abuse. The outcome of these cases might not even be the fault of the case-manager, in a sense – but only of their willingness to believe the most insistent and emotionally delivered explanations of the events.
Meanwhile, cutting funding of child protective services has been a theme going through several governments in a row, along with the usual political ridiculousness of how encouraging more traditional family values will solve all of these problems (at least the visible ones, so that we can go back to the good old days in the 1800s, or something, when women were happy to not vote, fix things at home, and not kill themselves in desparation all that often. Presumably we are having many research missions sent to the outskirts of Indian villages for inspiration).
That being said, child protective servies are necessary, and it is like Hans Jacob says, that the threshold for taking action is set extremely high for taking children away from their parents. Admittedly we have prominent recent examples of asylum seekers being separated from their parents as children cannot (yet) be thrown out of the country without an application process, but parents can. And there are grey areas where divorced parents might have problems medically or psychologically for a period, and then will be found to need help taking care of their kids. This is still horrible, but it is perhaps less horrible than the alternatives.
Denying categorically that we forcibly separate children from their parents is in other words not very believable. Although I know it does not happen often, and that there will be very difficult underlying (and private) complications involved whenever it happens.