Wrong portrayal

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Wrong portrayal

Monday, 20 March 2023 | Pioneer

Wrong portrayal

Norwegian Ambassador has rightly slammed Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway

It is not very often that ambassadors respond to a Hindi movie. But Norwegian Ambassador to India Hans Jacob Frydenlund did that last week when he slammed the Rani Mukerji-starrer Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway for “factual inaccuracies” and portraying “Norway as an uncaring country.” The movie is based on a real incident in 2011 when two children were removed from an Indian immigrant couple by the Norwegian foster system, supposedly due to differences in culture. Frydenlund made it clear that this doesn’t happen in his country. He went on to “categorically deny that feeding with hands and sleeping in the same bed would be the reason for placing children in alternative care.” In a newspaper article, he wrote that he himself fed his kids with his own hands and slept in the same bed. The Norwegian Embassy also said in a statement, “Children will never be taken away from their families based on cultural differences described. Eating with their hands or having children sleeping in bed with their parents are not considered practices harmful to children and are not uncommon in Norway, irrespective of cultural background.” At the heart of the issue are Indians’ excessive and unreasonable expectations from Western nations—and only from Western nations. For instance, non-Muslims are not allowed to worship in public in Saudi Arabia. Which filmmaker has been agitated by this fact?

A couple of points need to be highlighted here. A country has every right to preserve its conventions and traditions, customs and culture. How many Indians would relish the sight of immigrant Norwegians, Germans, etc., sunbathing in Haridwar, Varanasi, or Rishikesh? Or, for that matter, would Pakistanis tolerate similar spectacles at the Karachi beach? If the authorities in India and Pakistan enforce certain dress codes at beaches, they cannot be accused of being ‘xenophobic.’ Similarly, if European nations object to the nightlong Bhagwati jagrans, with loudspeakers keeping the entire locality awake with bhajans, or ban azaan on loudspeakers, they should not be condemned as ‘racist’, intolerant, bigoted, etc. The second point to be made here is that there is always a price to be paid for any facility. Indians often laud the excellent social security system, especially in Scandinavian countries. They must also realise that all this comes at a cost—both financial and otherwise. A variety of freebies means that a lot of people have to be taxed highly, concomitantly, the role of the State increases; the result is stagnation. Sweden faced it in 1994, after which there was a paradigm shift in its economic policy. Then there are other costs: big State means big intervention not just in the economy but also in the lives of people. As former US president Gerald R Ford said, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.” Indians should never lose sight of these facts.

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