PDF hosted at the Radboud Repository of the Radboud University Nijmegen The following full text is a publisher's version. For additional information about this publication click this link. http://hdl.handle.net/2066/73643 Please be advised that this information was generated on 2017-01-31 and may be subject to change. Once a mother Relinquishment and adoption from the perspective of unmarried mothers in South India Pien Bos Once a mother Relinquishment and adoption from the perspective of unmarried mothers in South India Een wetenschappelijke proeve op het gebied van de Sociale Wetenschappen PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen op gezag van de rector magnificus prof. mr. S.C.J.J. Kortmann, volgens besluit van het College van Decanen in het openbaar te verdedigen op donderdag 10 januari 2008 om 15.30 uur precies door Gijsbertine Bos geboren op 20 april 1964 te Noordeloos ZH Promotor: Prof. dr. J. Schrijvers (Universiteit van Amsterdam) Copromotor: Dr. F. Reysoo (IHEID, Genève) Manuscriptcommissie: Prof. dr. F.A.M. Hüsken Prof. dr. C.H.C.J. van Nijnatten Dr. M.H.G. den Uyl (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) Frontcover Early every morning, women all over Tamil Nadu draw intricate patterns on the ground in front of the main entrance of their houses. It is called a kōlam. A kōlam is a welcome to Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity. It also symbolizes an auspicious welcome to visitors: an invitation. This picture of a woman drawing a kōlam invites you into the lives of the women who shared their experiences. 4 A kōlam is a very auspicious symbol, but unmarried mothers are considered inauspicious in hegemonic discourses. In this regard, the kōlam on the frontcover also subverts the categorisation of women into madonna and whore and symbolizes a fundamental critique shared by many women. This publication has been realized with the financial support of the J.E. Jurriaanse Stichting, the Radboud University Nijmegen, WODC and WOTRO. © Pien Bos, 2007 ISBN 978-90-9022453-4 Cover design: Mark van Oostveen Cover photo: Meike Melenhorst Graphics and layout: Lou Nijsen Printed by: Ipskamp B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm or any other means, without the prior written permission from the author. Once a mother 5 Tamil Nadu Once a mother (..) I’m everything you lost. You won’t forgive me. My memory keeps getting in the way of your history. There is nothing to forgive. You can’t forgive me. I hid my pain even from myself; I revealed my pain only to myself. There is everything to forgive. You can’t forgive me. 6 If only somehow you could have been mine, What would not have been possible in this world? Agha Shahid Ali in: The Country Without a Post Office quoted by Salman Rushdie in: Shalimar the clown Once a mother Acknowledgements A fifteen-year journey through the field of adoption comes to an end with this book and this could not have been achieved without the commitments, candour and intimate contribution of the mothers who participated in interviews and shared their turbulent lives with me in informal settings. I am deeply grateful for their willingness and courage in describing situations and emotions which can hardly be expressed in words. Courage is also an appropriate word to describe the attitude of the people working in or for NGOs who led me to the mothers. Staff members, directors and board members opened their doors, and some of them also opened their minds and hearts, by offering me uncontrolled entrée in their organisations and sometimes their personal lives as well. This access and trust were prerequisites to carry out my fieldwork. I thank WOTRO, the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research, for a generous five year part-time grant to pursue a PhD. I also thank WODC (Ministry of Justice, the 7 Nether lands), and in particular the encouraging enthusiasm of Han Dekker (I.M.), my first contact person, for generously covering the costs of a long research process. The department of Social Science Research Methodology of the Radboud University in Nijmegen offered me financial and structural support and friendly colleagues. In this regard, I especially acknowledge the sincere involvement, encouragement and moral support of Professor Bert Felling. Also, my sincere thanks to Elly van Wijk from the secretariat. My English, in its ‘raw version’ of the first drafts, was far from perfect. I have highly appreciated the advices and editing of Veena N. in this regard. Jules van Lieshout PhD put his friendship into practice with long hours in editing when deadlines and time pressure emerged. Dr. A.G. Menon checked my Tamil transliteration and any mistake, which has slipped through afterwards, is my own. Thanks to professor Rajni Palriwala’s co-operation, the research became affiliated to the University of Delhi. Rajni supported me in an intellectual and practical sense. Thanks to her, I came in touch with Sumitra Nair who collected significant documents and statistics on government level. I am very grateful for Rajni’s recommendation with regard to Florina Benoit. Florina, my first field assistant, did not merely support me with her professional skills as social worker and fellow researcher, she also offered me her warm friendship. When Florina’s own research and career could not be combined anymore with assisting me, she led me to her sister Cecilia. Cecilia helped me out in the last couple of months of fieldwork. As a mother of two teenagers, wife and daughter-in-law, she shared her valuable life-experiences, interpretations, insights and warm involvement. I deeply value Wies van Bemmel’s sharing of professional insights as an anthropologist as Acknowledgements well as her personal care as a friend. I thank Sharada Srinivasan who as a PhD colleague and friend, contributed to some parts of my first drafts. In general, I would like to acknowledge the warm support of my friends who, some as colleagues, patiently listened, advised, supported and mirrored me. This research would never have been started, developed and completed without my two supervisors Fenneke Reysoo and Joke Schrijvers. Although both supported and coached me in their own unique and personal way, I prefer to acknowledge them as one unit since their professional and personal support was complementary and perfectly attuned. When I try to express my experiences as a scholar of these two professionals, the metaphor guru regularly comes into my mind. A guru, in a Brahman sense, is not merely a teacher. She (or he) develops a true and significant relationship with her (or his) pupil and on such a caring and solid basis, the pupil becomes trained and formed. The ‘ego’ of a guru, in this teaching process, remains in the periphery since the guru focuses in a gentle and respectful manner on the scope of the pupil’s talents. This process also involves inevitable confrontations with the pupil’s weaknesses and limitations. Joke and Fenneke, both of you expressed that I easily deal with critical comments and I think many people will burst out laughing on reading this. It is an art to communicate criticism in a constructive and respectful way and you are both masters at this art. It is very hard to express in a couple of lines what Fenneke and Joke meant for me personally as well as for this research, but a thorough analysis of the ways they interpreted and carried out their roles would be a source of inspiration for every future (co)promoter. My family constantly has been an important source of back-up. My mother Grieta Bos-Brouwer and my father Gijsbert Bos offered me, throughout my life, the experience of meaningful parental love. 8 They always encouraged me in everything I undertook with unrelenting faith. My two sisters and two brothers, including their partners, supported me in practical, emotional and intellectual sense and I feel privileged to have them as family. I also feel rich with Alle and our two sons Lukas and Kasper. I thank my two little boys for being the persons who they are. Alle, you simply ‘stored your brushes’ and initially took our move to India as a challenge. In the course of time, you made this adventure successful in a professional and personal sense. Together, we withstood typhoid, malaria, the threat of a nuclear war, our temporary repatriation, and a tropical heat wave, but the positive experiences of living in Tamil Nadu, an Indian state which you took into your heart, always predominated. You enthusiastically fathered our boys and against the grain proved yourself a ‘meritorious househusband’. You believed in the importance of this project and as a family, we cherish our enriching experiences. Nijmegen, November 2007 Once a mother Table of contents Acknowledgements 7 Table of contents 9 Introduction 13 Valarmathi 15 A fundamental debate 17 Adoptive triangle? 18 Adoption discourses 19 Defining the research scope 21 Coming to terms with terminology 22 Legal aspects of surrendering and adoption in India 24 9 The ´Cradle Baby Scheme´ 25 Constructing knowledge 28 Advocacy for an informed decision 30 The child’s perspective 32 Adoptive parents 35 Some figures 35 The process of analysis 37 Fieldwork 2002-2003 38 Cultural demarcation 41 Gender 43 Cakti (Sakti) 43 Summary 44 CHAPTER 1 - Marriage & seXuality 45 Arranged marriages 47 Love marriages 52 Negotiating marriage 54 ‘Marriage is life’ 57 ‘Living with her husband’ 61 Once a mother ‘Marriage is slavery’ 62 Negotiating sexuality 65 Spoilt women and spoilt lives 74 Summary 77 Chapter 2