The history of adoption is also partly one of sexual violence against girls and women. It is story that includes rape outside of marriage and pregnancy as a result of incest. The perpetrators were often relatives, family friends or neighbours and men of high social status, for example employers of domestic servants, plantation or factory supervisors or spiritual teachers.
Nila (aged 12): sexual violence in the family
12-year-old Nila* [FN1 All names marked with an asterisk have been changed.] was raped and impregnated by her uncle in the 1990s. By the time her mother found out, Neela was already over 20-weeks pregnant, the legal time limit for an abortion. She thus had no other option than to give birth. Although the uncle's crime was punishable under Indian law, it was difficult for the parents to take legal action. They pressed charges with the support of Indian social worker Pritha Somnath*, who Andrea Abraham and Asha Narayan Iyer interviewed in Mumbai.[FN2 Andrea Abraham, Asha Narayan Iyer, "The Stigmatisation of Unwed Mothers. Ethnographic Research in India", in: Andrea Abraham, Sabine Bitter, Rita Kesselring (ed.), Mother Unknown. Adoption of Children from India in the Swiss Cantons of Zurich and Thurgau, 1973–2002, Zurich 2024, p. 49–68.] Nevertheless, she is taken to a shelter in another location for the remainder of her pregnancy and childbirth as the family are afraid to face the double stigma of unwed motherhood and rape.
The child, now an expectant mother, thus goes through a series of highly stressful experiences: she is raped and then either conceals her pregnancy or doesn’t realise she is pregnant, she faces conflicting loyalties, has to leave home and move to a shelter, endure childbirth and become a mother at the age of 13, part with her baby and then return to the home of her parents to continue her teenagehood.
Pritha Somnath has worked as a liaison between the social services and the police since the 1990s and in this position has accompanied many women who were victims of violence. In this difficult role, she says she found two phenomena especially challenging. First, she remembers that the more mature the girl appeared in her physical development, the more she was blamed for having been raped and the greater the social stigma she experienced. Second, she recalls that many girls who were too young to have sex stood in a relationship of loyalty to the perpetrator, which made it difficult to investigate the offence and bring the perpetrator to justice.
Pritha Somnath also encountered situations in which the women assaulted were particularly vulnerable owing to physical or psychological impairments.
https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/living/story/19861115-tragedy-of-unwed-motherhood-in-india-harks-back-to-hindu-mythology-801455-1986-11-14
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Saba (aged 30): disability as a risk factor for sexual violence
Saba[FN3 Saba's story was published in 1986 in India Today magazine.] was left by her sisters at an ashram in a suburb of Calcutta in the early 1980s because she suffered from a cognitive and physical impairment and could no longer be cared for by her family. She lived in a fantasy world in which she believed she was ravishingly beautiful and irresistible to men. A guard at the ashram took advantage of this to have unprotected sex with Saba, getting her pregnant. In her third month of pregnancy, Saba showed up at the International Mission of Hope (IMH),[FN4 Inspired by the work of Mother Teresa, US citizen Cherie Clark founded the International Mission of Hope (IMH) in Calcutta in in 1977. For 12 years, she placed children with European and US couples seeking to adopt. The organisation ran shelters for unwed pregnant women located in Calcutta and Madras.] which ran both the Asha Kendra shelter and a children's home with an adoption placement service. She didn't know how the pregnancy had come about and found the physical changes during pregnancy very upsetting. Mamata Gupta, who was the director of the Asha Kendra at the time, recalled that "every time the baby moved inside her, she whimpered in fear and retreated into her fantasy world".
After the birth, the organisation placed Saba's child with a couple willing to adopt her and helped Saba get back on her feet (see also: social rehabilitation).
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Anwara (right) and Mona, two unwed pregnant women staying at the Asha Kendra shelter in Calcutta in 1986.
ID 2D9CP3A, Standard licenses, Standard, Salva Campillo / Alamy Stock Photo
Anwara (aged 14): Working in Calcutta's red-light district
Many women became accidentally pregnant at their places of work.[FN5 The story of Anwara was published in India Today magazine in 1986.] Anwara grew up in the 1970s and 1980s in the narrow lanes of Sonagachi, Calcutta's the oldest and largest red-light district. Her mother had been a prostitute. Many of the women who lived there had taken up prostitution to escape domestic violence or to make a living after their husbands abandoned them and their children. Other women had received fake job offers as nannies or domestic help[FN6 Carolyn Sleightholme & Indrani Sinha, Guilty Without Trial. Women in the Sex Trade in Calcutta, Calcutta, 1996, https://archive.org/details/guiltywithouttri0000slei, accessed 18.06.2024.] or like Anwara had had no choice but to continue in the same line of work as their mother.
In the brothels, which were run by pimps, many girls and women were forced to have unprotected sex, risking sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancy. In 1992, the All India Institute of Public Health and Hygiene in Sonagachi began a major prevention campaign, which included free condoms and sex education.[FN7 Vijayendra Rao, Indrani Gupta, Michael Lokshin & SmarajitJana, "Sex Workers and the Cost of Safe Sex. The Compensating Differential for Condom Use Among Calcutta Prostitutes", International Journal of Behavioral Development, 71(2), p. 585–603.] The First National Conference of Sex Workers in India, held in Calcutta in 1997, marked the beginning of a major movement in favour of sex workers' rights.[FN8 https://www.nswp.org/sites/nswp.org/files/SexWorkers Manifesto - Meeting in India.pdf (18.06.2024)] 14-year-old Anwara became pregnant before these campaigns could take effect. She turned to the International Mission of Hope (IMH)[FN9 Inspired by the work of Mother Teresa, US citizen Cherie Clark founded the International Mission of Hope (IMH) in Calcutta in in 1977. For 12 years, she placed children with European and US couples seeking to adopt. This charity ran shelters in Calcutta and Madras for women who became pregnant out of wedlock.] for assistance: "How can I look after a child? I am a child myself," she is quoted as saying in the India Today report in 1986.
Other women became pregnant after being raped by their supervisors or employers while working in low-paid jobs in agriculture, factories or people's homes. In the informal sector, such as among street vendors, traders and cigarette rollers, women had organised themselves into cooperatives and trade unions from the 1980s onward. The whole family often depended on the women's pay, which meant they could not simply go and work somewhere else. In the 1980s and 90s, gynaecologist Anand Ghosh*, who researchers Andrea Abraham and Asha Narayan Iyer interviewed in Mumbai[FN10 Andrea Abraham & Asha Narayan Iyer, "The Stigmatisation of Unwed Mothers. Ethnographic Research in India", in: Andrea Abraham, Sabine Bitter, Rita Kesselring (ed.), Mother Unknown. Adoption of Children from India in the Swiss Cantons of Zurich and Thurgau, 1973–2002, p. 49 –68.] spoke of the women he treated who worked as day labourers alongside their families in tobacco factories:
"At the time, there was a huge tobacco industry in Mangalore. [...]. All the women and their daughters and the whole families worked there. The fathers were in the fields harvesting the tobacco and the mothers and daughters were in the factory rolling the tobacco. […] At the end of the day, they [the supervisors and managers] simply pointed at them and the women had to go home with them. […] If they didn't agree [to sexual intercourse], they lost their jobs. They were all day labourers. They were paid 15 to 20 rupees to roll 300 bidis [cigarettes] in a day. And they took that money and bought food for themselves with it at the end of the day.[…] They continued with the pregnancies because they had no time to go to the hospital for an abortion. So they were admitted and gave birth to their child. They went away during the night and left the baby behind. […] The police couldn’t really intervene, because if these people don’t come and make a complaint, they can’t do anything.”
(Anand Ghosh, gynaecologist)
INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANISATION: Beedi Sector in India: A Note
Mangalore Ganesh Beedies, hand-rolled cigarettes from the Indian state of Karnataka (Aviva West, CC BY-SA 2.0).
HealthHistoryArt, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
In many cases, sexual intercourse with the employer was an unspoken condition of employment. Women workers who belonged to a lower caste were to a certain extent regarded as the 'sexual property' of their employers.This impunity perpetuated a system of sexual exploitation that led to unwanted pregnancies and to pregnancies out of wedlock. For social worker Pritha Somnath, such stories are by no means a thing of the past. This is why she is promoting cooperation between social workers and the police also in rural areas of India. The Special Cell for Women and Children, an initiative to end violence against women, will celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2024. The first Special Cell for Women and Children was founded in 1984 in the city then known as Bombay. Today, there are 612 such centres across India.[FN11 For a detailed history of the Special Cells for Women and Children, see: https://tiss.edu/view/11/projects/all-projects/special-cell-for-women-and-children-maharashtra/]
Some 612 contact centres have been set up for women and girls affected by violence. The Special Cells for Women and Children support collaboration between social workers and the police.
