The News Story

Aussies must be choking over their raisin toasts at breakfast reading of racist attacks on Indians in Sydney and Melbourne. I have been receiving calls from friends and relatives enquiring of my safety. Canberra is a nice white collar capital city with polished government types. That is more than what I can say about some other crude capital cities- no prizes for guessing which one I mean- the one I come from, of course. But government types all over the world can be, you know, humourless. They look as if the burden of the whole world rests on their creaky shoulders and they haven’t had bowel movements for the last several days. Comes with the territory, I suppose. Being part of government can lull you into thinking that you are the epicenter of the world.

I have landed with some egg in my face. I had successfully persuaded my nephew to join University in Australia against his wishes to study in UK or USA. He asks me now is it wise to come there. I try my best to reassure him. The Australians had cancelled their Davis Cup tie in Chennai (and got themselves disqualified for a year) citing security concerns. I spent 6 years in Chennai. My first thoughts were…didn’t the Australian High Commissioner in Delhi brief them? Chennai is the city where even a Pakistani cricket player who hit a century got a standing ovation. It is no less safe than down town Melbourne or Sydney. To be compared to other dangerous spots in South Asia was a bit too much and it irks me endlessly. But there is something called poetic justice. Now my whole country is asking: Is Australia safe? My answer is.. yes. I believe that these attacks are more circumstantial than racist. The fact that the victims were dark skinned Indians must have given them some added enthusiasm. But I don’t think they are targeted as a class. So my advice is: do come here: it is a great country.

Yes there are concerns. Of a whole Australian generation growing up without ambition: becoming a burden on the welfare state; or the broken families they come from. It is going to be a problem for them. Not us. The Chinese are all pervasive here. Why Indians, not Chinese, if it all has to do with race? For one, the Chinese students are rich ones; they stay in richer localities, blowing up their parents’ money. Their standards of English are much poorer than that of Indians, but they are hard working. They are not visible in the underbelly of the city where such attacks take place. The Indian students are those who didn’t get into the best of Indian institutions (which are tougher to get into than Harvard) and would rather study abroad than in down market Indian ones. It is cheaper to study here than in UK or USA without a scholarship. Also, the Australians are much obliged to Chinese, for understandable reasons… (read ‘And the PM spoke Mandarin’ in this blog). The Aussie media is downplaying these incidents whereas the Indian media has gone to town with it. The Australians are deeply embarrassed by it. Recently, the ex-CEO of Telstra (a US national of Mexican origin) accused Australia of being racist. I could sense the revulsion in the media and civil society over his remarks. This is a country that practiced an overtly “white Australia” policy for several years. They have come a long way since then. They wouldn’t like to be called racist just as we wouldn’t like to be called a nation of cheats, as the touts standing outside IGI airport Delhi would have a new visitor to India believe.

We had little experience of racism in Canberra -except for one small incident when some drunken punks in a car, at the Australia day concert, shouted at us to go back to India... I am sure they must have driven down from Sydney or Melbourne. I wouldn’t brand the whole country racist on that basis. Well, if you ask me about discrimination, I can say it is no worse than what we encounter as Indians in various parts of our own country based on the identities we possess. I have this template to remember countries by. For Australia, I think of Barry, Rhonda (my landlady) and others who have been wonderful to us. I tend to forget that I was ripped off by another Australian (although originally of an East Asian nationality) by getting me into a house not fit for inhabitation. He still owes me 220 $. I want to file a police complaint against him. I don’t want him to cheat another international student again…The Missus says forget it- we are here for a little while – let bygones be bygones. We did pretty OK after all that. There might be poetic justice awaiting him also.

So we are safe, as of now. I am more threatened by climate change, global warming and the assignment due for submission tomorrow in University than racism in Australia.