Salman Khurshid 
India has the world’s largest diaspora at 32 million, with over a million of our citizens going abroad for work every year.
Notably the number of Indians relinquishing their citizenship is relatively low. In 2021, the number of Indian renouncing their citizenship stood at 0.16 million. This means that the connection with India of our migrant population remains intact.
The connection is not merely the legal one of citizenship. Personal foreign remittances to India are the largest in the world at US $ 89 billion according to figures for 2021. They are expected to rise to US $ 100 billion this year. This is money that Indians working abroad are sending back home to their families. The connection with the home country, is filial and emotional. Cultural attributes too remain intact even after decades, even generations away from home.
Migration is certainly no longer a one-way street. Significantly, in recent times migrant population of all backgrounds have chosen retirement in India even as some have chosen to permanently settle in the host countries. With rapid developments in the urban landscape of India there is a growing trend of highly-skilled professionals, graduates of our prestigious engineering and business management institutions, choosing to return to India to settle here after a few years abroad.
The picture that emerges matches the slogan of the G20 Summit under India’s presidentship: ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” – ‘the world is one family.’ For expatriate diaspora families moving between home and the world, the idea of the world as one family has acquired a tangible form of lived experience beyond the origins in abstract notions of universal humanity and fraternity. A global, cosmopolitan culture is becoming pervasive.
Inevitably new opportunities and challenges present themselves to the sending and the receiving country. One delicate but distressing issue that has been arising repeatedly, has presented itself once again in the ongoing saga of the Gujarati baby in Berlin who is currently in custody of the child services agency of Germany after judicial orders were passed to deprive the parents of their parental rights. An appeal is pending even as the parents are deprived of simple access.
The issue is the fate of Indian children removed from parental custody by foreign child services agencies and subjected to being brought up in an artificial environment. We were confronted with this issue during my tenure and that of my immediate predecessor, Mr S.M. Krishna, as external affairs minister. It also arose on the watch of my successor as Minister of External Affairs, the late Mrs Sushma Swaraj. In each case we put in our energies to find an immediate solution.
The children tend to be very young: infants, toddlers and primary schoolers. They are often unfamiliar with the local language and culture. The environment in the home they are taken from, including food, language and religious practice, is largely that of the home in India. Yet these children are placed in foster care of person who are native to the country of residence. The foster carers have no ethnic or cultural links with the child.This is an issue that does not confront India alone. Expatriate families from other countries in South Asia, South America, Eastern Europe and Africa are similarly affected in the nations of Western Europe, the United Kingdom, North America, Australia and New Zealand.
When such children are removed, home origin countries intervene on an ad hoc basis to have them repatriated to their extended family or a foster placement in the home country. However, in the absence of standard operating procedures, this involves protracted negotiations resulting in much distress all round, especially to the impressionable children involved. Sometimes parents are unable to withstand the pressure. A few days ago we had the tragic death by suicide of an Indian mother whose children were confiscated by Australian child protection services. Amongst some prominent cases reported in recent years are the ones of Mrs Chatterjee (later featured in the film Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway), Mrs Shah v Germany, Mrs Patil v Australia, Mrs Yusuf v England, and Mrs Annie Johansson v Sweden.
To avoid further such tragedies, there is an urgent need for the international community to develop a protocol for the repatriation of children removed from their parents by foreign child services. When the home country is willing to take responsibility for the safety and welfare of the child, as the Indian government has done in the case of the Gujarati baby in Germany, there would appear to be no reason to refuse this.
While we must respect foreign legal systems for intervening to remove children that they believe are at risk or victims child abuse, and without at present dealing with the parents’ claims of cultural bias and lack of due process, the fate of such children must not be decided on a technical and jurisdictional basis. The essential humanity of the child must be paramount and the ethnocultural backdrop not be ignored.
It is reported that several top former judges of the high courts have written to the G20 to seek a compassionate and reasonable solution to this human problem. The Indian government will hopefully initiate a dialogue on this issue at the G20 Summit despite a full agenda and that we can hear the news that the Gujarati baby will return from Germany to India. And a humane protocol will be put in place.
Salman Khurshid is a former external affairs minister of India.