Bringing Children Adopted By Foreigners And Indian Parents Together, One Reunion At A Time
What happens to Indian orphans who are adopted by foreigners, when
they want to trace their biological parents? Help is now at hand.
Kaveri Mishra
Updated on: 7 February 2024 4:58 pm
Published at: 17 November 2021 5:53 pm
Bringing Children Adopted By Foreigners And Indian Parents Together,
One Reunion At A Time
A few years ago, in Delhi, I saw a father who had given up his
two-month-old daughter for adoption to an orphanage, meet his child
after 35 years. It was an electric moment. The two didn’t exchange any
word—the girl had been adopted by a European family and didn’t speak
any Hindi, which was the only language the father understood—but the
way they looked at each other, overcome with emotions, you could tell
that they were quietly making up for lost time.
But let me rewind a bit and place this reunion in context.
I had come in touch with Arun Dohle and Anjali Pawar who were
facilitating the reunions between many adoptees living outside India
and their biological parents in the country. Over the past 15 years,
they have helped 55 adoptees from all over the world trace their
biological parents in India. The two agreed to take me along for one
of the reunions, which happened in a gurudwara in Delhi. The father
was a Sikh, which is why he insisted that their first meeting happen
at a gurudwara. His daughter had been brought up as Christian. This
was that reunion.
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The father just kept looking at his daughter awkwardly for minutes on
end and she, with a lot of hesitation, tried to make contact, by
touching him, stepping forward to embrace him. She went on to visit
his house and was welcomed by everyone in it. She may not have found
answers to all her questions but, thanks to Dohle and Pawar, she had
taken a huge stride towards finding a closure.
Three years later, as I got in touch with them, Dohle and Pawar told
me they now have a website to help adoptees from India search their
parents. This is how visitors to adopteerightscouncil.org are
greeted: ‘Are you an Indian adoptee in search for answers about your
adoption, your story, and your Indian roots? Are you looking for your
Indian family? Wondering if they can be traced? We were in the same
#crib and, thanks to intercountry adoption, our identities were wiped
out’.
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Dohle knows the system well enough to help others. He’s been through
it himself. The India born-German national fought a legal battle for
17 years to be able to see his biological mother. In fact, his case,
which went right up to the Supreme Court of India, paved the way for
more adoptees to trace their roots.
ALSO READ: Transgenders In India Still Struggling For Right To Adopt Or Marry
“I wanted to search for my roots when I was 14. But it was not
possible then. I resumed my search in ’93. That’s the first time I
came to India. I went to my orphanage and had the experience that
most adoptees have—they were not helpful in sharing my adoption
records,” Dohle says.
After 17 years of litigation, in 2010, he finally was able to access
his records and meet his mother. “It’s a basic question every human
being has, isn’t it, to know where you come from, where you belong,”
he says. Dohle, who runs the child rights NGO ACT (Against Child
Trafficking), along with Anjali Pawar, who works as a consultant for
the NGO, now work round the year to help other adoptees trace their
roots.
But even after all these years, having come to know the system inside
out, their work hasn’t become any easier. The process is fraught with
obstructions. The biggest bottleneck is in getting adoption records
from the orphanages, for which the two have often had to approach
courts.
ALSO READ: Adoption Rackets Prey On Unsuspecting People Desperate For Children
Even after getting a favourable verdict, there’s the question of how
to get the adoptee meet their biological parent. In a society that
looks down upon single mothers, women often prefer to keep children
born out of wedlock hidden from the world. They often give their
children over to orphanages, from where the adoptees are taken in by
families from within the country and outside. After all these years,
many mothers, for obvious reasons, don’t want to accept their past.
“In a recent case we had an adoptee, Sulekha, come to us looking for
her mother. After a long struggle we managed to trace her mother. As
in most cases we found that the child was born out of wedlock. I went
up to her and told her that her daughter was looking for her. The
mother didn’t want her family to know about it. So we kept the meeting
private. It was a cathartic experience for both,” Anjali says.
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Makes A Case For Adoption
She feels that meetings held privately help people looking for
closure much more than reuions between parents and children in public.
“In private, both parent and child can cry as much as they want. They
can embrace each other without inhibitions. It’s healing for them,”
says Anjali, who has organised many such meetings at her own house.
Outlook contacted Sulekha to understand what the process meant to her.
Sulekha, who was adopted by a family from the Netherlands, says that
she grew up with a lot of questions about her adoption. In what
circumstances was she given up? Did she have any brothers or sisters
back in India? Did the family have a history of any hereditary
diseases? Did she resemble her biological mother? How was her mother
doing? Did she ever think about Sulekha?
“I completely understand that we had to meet my mother in secret. If
the truth came out, it would put her in great danger. But I do think
it’s a pity that after so many years and after such a long search, it
had to be like this. It makes me sad that there seems no other way we
could do this. Even though the meeting happened in secret, my mother
understood what happened and we made a connection. It was a very
important moment and it has given me a lot of peace,” Sulekha told
Outlook.
David Kildendal Nielsen with his biological mother during their
reunion in Chennai; and (right) Arun Dohle
But not every such reunion happens in the dark. There is the case of
David Kildendal Nielsen, who was adopted by Danish parents when he
was about 16 months old from an orphanage in Chennai. Thanks to Dohle
and Pawar’s efforts, David met his mother in October 2019. “It was
very emotional but also a big relief. I had been searching for close
to seven years from February 2013 until November 2019, but it was
during my last trip to Chennai that I found her,” David recalled,
admitting that he had given up all hope after potentially exhausting
all possibilities. “‘Seeing her’ is very difficult to put into words.
So many times, I have imagined what she would look like. Then suddenly
she stands before me. Forty years of separation and then we were
re-united; try and explain that,” he added.
ALSO READ: My Story Of Adoption: The Joys Of Parenthood Can’t Be
Expressed In Words
If there’s anything about this process that affects him, Dohle says,
it’s how adoptees expect him to help them for free. “A large number of
adoptees get angry about that. That really takes a mental toll. People
expect me to do this for free. Some of the adoptees are not even ready
to fight their own cases. They expect me to raise funds for them,
fight authorities and legal battles on their behalf. It gets crazy
sometimes.”
Dohle and Pawar have solved this problem by proposing a financially
sustainable model for adoptees who want to trace their roots. On their
website they state that in over 10 years searching in India, they’ve
found that the real cost of such searches is at least Rs 17 lakh.
“The time and costs involved are incredible and we provide
aftercare/advice even after the seven-year period,” he said. So
they’ve come up with a seven-year-long subscription model. “From our
side, we have to gather necessary information such as name and
address of the Indian family within 24 months. If we fail, you can
stop the subscription...,” he added.
ALSO READ: Paternitas Interruptus: Adoption Is Still Not A Preferred
Choice For Indian Society
But then, what drives these people to go to such great lengths to find
their biological family? Shouldn’t adoptees, who otherwise may have
been living in dire circumstances, be thankful for growing up in a
financially secure environment?
The answer to this question can be found in the testimonial of one
Linzi Ibrahim on Dohle’s website. “Out of a small group of adoptees
who were adopted from Sri Lanka to NSW (New South Wales), Australia:
three have committed suicide, three have had a few failed suicide
attempts, three have a history of self-harm, two have been in jail,
many experience mental and emotional distress.
Linzi, an adoptee herself, also wrote that beneath the facade of
“perfectly happy” faces are people hiding their pain. “There are
adoptees who think they are completely unaffected by their adoptions.
But sometimes a traumatic event affects them more than it would affect
a non-adopted person. We are taught to be grateful for losing our
families. We are expected to fit in and ignore our past,” she wrote,
adding that most of the adoptees are unaware that the root cause of
their lies in the fact that they were adopted. “Why would we think
that adoption could be the cause of so many of our problems when it
only brings positivity?” she added, laying bare the deep psychlogical
wounds that sacr the hearts of many adoptees.
ALSO READ: Adoption Is A Giant Monkey Puzzle
Dohle recalls at least four adoptees who were driven to suicide by
their trauma that came from a sense of displacement. Of one person he
says, “She first agreed to search through us. Then finally she
travelled alone to the city where her biological family lived. The
orphanage stalled her atatempts to seek her adoption records. Three
months after her return to Belgium she jumped out of her apartment
window.”
The emotional burden of someone growing up looking inexplicably
different from those around them can push people to their limits.
Dohle knows this fully well. He was a well-to-do financial consultant
based in Germany. He had a family of his own. Until he became obsessed
with the idea of searching for his roots.
“Adoption is a very serious matter. It changes the identity of the
child permanently, severs all ties they could have with their
community. We should see adoption as a form of slavery. In my own
case, my personal life took a hit. My marriage fell apart. I don’t
have a place to live in Germany. I really wanted to find my biological
family and I put a lot of energy into it. Over time I saw many people
turn against me,” Dohle says.
When asked whether the meeting with his mother gave him a sense of
closure, or is he still looking for justice, Dohle says, “I am looking
for justice. I want compensation. What happened to me shouldn’t happen
to others. Justice can happen in India and I’m trying to ensure that
it happens to everyone like me. I don’t want to see other adoptees
suffer.”