Inside the Long, Winding Search for India’s Forgotten Adoptees
Inside the Long, Winding Search for India’s Forgotten Adoptees
Amid a growing global community of adoptees revisiting their pasts, 32 inter-country adoptees filed applications with the Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA) in 2024–25 seeking to trace their biological parents, according to an RTI response obtained by TOI.
For a growing number of adults adopted abroad from India, that empty space has become impossible to ignore. Many of them—now in their 30s, 40s, and 50s—are returning to the country of their birth in search of answers their documents never held. These adoptees were part of hundreds sent abroad when India's adoption landscape was a patchwork of private shelters, under-regulated agencies, and inconsistent documentation. For them, the search is not only about identity—it is also about confronting the silence built into their early histories.
A Study Reopens What Was Long Buried
In February of last year, a study titled ‘Mother Unknown' cast new light on the scale and complexity of inter-country adoptions between India and Switzerland. Its findings revealed that 2,278 Indian children were adopted into Swiss families between 1973 and 2002.
The research team—anthropologist Rita Kesselring, ethnologist Andrea Abraham, historian Sabine Bitter, and Mumbai-based social worker Asha Narayan Iyer—examined 48 adoption files. What they found missing was more revealing than what remained:
No Consent Records: Not one file contained a deed of surrender, the document that confirms a birth mother's informed consent.
Erased Histories: Across Swiss public and private archives, these papers had simply disappeared—or perhaps never existed in the first place.
The Repeating Phrase: In many files, the same chilling phrase repeated itself: "mother unknown"—two words that would go on to shape entire lives.
The study elaborates on how birth mothers "were erased from documentation and also from public consciousness." Abraham notes:
"There is no discourse on the mother/parent's perspective in India. It's as if the birth mother did not exist... if a mother decided or wished to stay anonymous 30-50 years ago and said that she never wanted to be contacted again ever, how can we know that today this is still what she wants? It is like freezing of her decision-making."
When Paperwork Becomes Destiny
From the late 1960s, Indian children's homes, hospitals, police stations, and private shelters frequently transferred children to foreign adoption agencies, sometimes under murky financial arrangements where documentation was either sparse or completely missing. Even after regulations were tightened in the 1980s, intermediaries in India continued to exercise significant discretion over what information they recorded or shared.
The result? Thousands of children grew up across Europe with little to no knowledge of their origins.
In Switzerland, adoptive families often faced this reality alone. The study notes that health and education systems offered limited support, leaving institutions unprepared for children whose racial, cultural, and emotional stories diverged drastically from the Swiss norm. Many adoptees later described childhoods shaped by racism, confusion, and a deep longing for answers that no one around them could provide.
The Painful Search for Self
The study includes deeply personal accounts of root searches—some successful, but many incredibly painful.
One such story is that of Ratna, a woman in her mid-40s who traveled from Switzerland to Kolkata in 2018. Her adoption file stated she had been brought to a children's hospital at 14 months old and remained there until her adoption. However, the file contained no surrender deed and few meaningful details. Ratna visited the hospital and then went to look for the orphanage listed in her documents, only to find it had closed in the 1990s. Its registers and records were long gone.
"I never found out who my birth mother was," she says.
Her story is emblematic. For some adoptees, root searches lead to emotional reunions. For others, they end in dead ends or awkward closures, where decades of separation create more distance than connection. Every search is unique, but nearly all are dictated by the quality of the records left behind.
Legal Gaps and Lifelong Questions
Senior advocate Rakesh Kapoor, who specializes in adoption and children's rights, notes that the process in the 1970s and '80s severely lacked transparency and accountability.
"Courts would grant international adoptions only after perusing enough evidence that a child was fully relinquished or abandoned by the birth parent/parents. Key documents like surrender deeds were to be provided to the courts by the adoption agencies."
But without strict checks, adoption agencies often failed to provide these documents. In some cases, the children were already under the guardianship of future parents; in others, Indian social workers briefly acted as guardians before responsibilities were transferred to Swiss counterparts.
"So, some children called orphan on paper may not have been so. They may not have been found on the streets. We have to check in sealed archives in courts that have the parental consent saying ‘Yes, I am giving away my child'," Kesselring explains.
An Unfinished Story
As adoptees continue to embark on root searches today, the inadequacies of past systems are resurfacing with renewed urgency. The 32 applications filed with CARA last year represent only the visible tip of a much larger global community seeking answers.
What these adults want is not just a file or a name. They want the opening chapter of their own story—one that was never fully written for them. In the end, ‘Mother Unknown' is a truth many adoptees carry quietly, and a reminder that identity is not just inherited—it is sought, rebuilt, and reclaimed, often one journey home at a time.