Indian student attacks: fledgling democracies can do better

The hullabaloo about attacks on Indian students in Melbourne is indicative of immaturity in the democratic development of both Australia and India.

Australians like to think that they’re an advanced democratic nation but the majority of its population care little about liberalism or democratic process. We like to see the mechanics and theatrics of parliament in action but this is not democracy.

India is 60 years young this year. It has 22 official languages and is culturally more diverse than Western Europe. While development across its 28 states and seven territories is uneven, there is no doubt that India is on an economic roll.

Yet it is still mired in grinding poverty. The civic infrastructure is poor and corruption is rampant. There is still only intermittent power and water and “slum dogs” only become millionaires in the movies.

A mature democracy with a free press is in constant revolution with itself. It is looking to overthrow hackneyed ideas and replace them with muscular new ones born from a vibrant polity. Does that sound like Australian society? Does that sound like Indian society? No, and maybe it never was.

Australia was effectively a monoculture until the arrival of the Greeks, Italians and Latvians after World War II. Our thinking was insular and we looked, even after the War, very much to England - although John Curtin’s call to “look to America” rang in our ears - but not in the furry koala ears of Bob Menzies.

As a child of the late 50s and 60s I remember the Catholic and Protestant divide, the stereotyping of all Italians as mafiosi, the Greek welfare “bludger” and later the Vietnamese “drug dealer”. My mother, who was from country South Australia, had no time for New Australians. To her, all immigrants were “unclean” or “untrustworthy”.

This is also a common perception of many Indians (especially from the middle class) who view white people (goras) as basically untrustworthy.

While we remember the White Australia policy and the continual neglect of our Indigenous people with shame or at the very least regret, Indians also remember Partition, the arming of the Tamil rebels, Indira Ghandi’s State of Emergency, Ayodhya and more. These are memory stains which cannot and should not be erased. There are lessons there for fledgling democracies.

Let us turn to the Indian student assault stories. There are some curious phenomena here. First, the stories are periodic. If you go to Google analytics and plot the news hits both here and in India over the last nine months, you get two sine waves about five to six months apart. The first is in May/June 2009, with the second and largest frequency on or about January 6, 2010 (1,400 news items).

It was only in the wake to the Indian general elections in May last year that the story first caught fire. The reason was dead air and vacant news columns in India. The Indian media needed to fill their newspapers and TV news bulletins.

So the Indian assault story comes in waves or rather, clusters of small news stories within those waves. What does this mean?

It means that the Indian assault stories are manufactured. It comes from news chiefs of staff in India who direct their reporters to focus on conflict stories and an overseas race story is prime conflict material.

People might rightly suggest, “surely the Indian assaults are not timed to fit a specific Indian news agenda”. But that’s exactly what has and is happening. There were allegations of assaults in the intervening months but not of a significant magnitude to “make a splash”. It’s far better to come out with all barrels blazing under a media campaign of “racist Australians”.

That sounds contrived doesn’t it? Surely news organisations don’t work like that. But they do, because conflict stories sell papers and advertisements, and the sad thing is that there is very little difference in news values between Indian and Australian mainstream media.

A few background points need to be made. As a media officer for Democrat Senator Sid Spindler in 1992, I helped investigate a number of nasty incidents concerning the National Front in Brunswick and Broadmeadows in Melbourne. They were targeting and harassing Muslim women. The police were called but very little action was taken.

Working at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology 10 years later, I heard similar reports from international student counsellors that Asian students were being targeted in the northern and western suburbs. Once again very little was done.

So in the case of Melbourne, the chickens have come home to roost and Broadmeadows is Premier John Brumby’s electorate.

In India these race-based stories play right in to the hands of extremist Hindu nationalist parties such as Shiv Sena who have threatened action against the Australian cricket team if they tour India (Mumbai). Race stories get blown out of proportion very quickly.

Recently India's Junior External Affairs Minister Preneet Kaur said the attacks on Indians were a major concern and students should avoid traveling to Australia. This is an incredible over reaction which penalises both bona fide Indian students and Australia’s education industry. But it’s a natural reaction to ongoing conflict stories.

Diplomatically the assaults have been handled poorly. The Indian Government knows that of the 20 or so assaults, many were opportunistic in nature. It knows that any assault on an Indian person in Australia is not necessarily a racist attack. The problem is that once the media plays the race card, in an immature democracy, the government is more likely to do the same - which plays in to the hands of extremists.

In Australia, it took the government three weeks to make any statement about the attacks and until late last year seemed to dismiss the attacks as trivial. This riled not only the Indian media but also the government in New Delhi.

Many Indian students need to work in Australia. They work as taxis drivers, as security guards, petrol pump attendants and in call centres. Many work in night jobs and being new to Australia, they don't know which suburbs to avoid.

“One of the main lessons to draw from these unfortunate incidents would be to introduce a pre-departure briefing for Indian students. Indian students should also make sure they undertake proper enquiries before going to Australia to pursue courses at some of the lesser-known universities and institutes,” said Rupakjyoti Borah in his recent On Line Opinion article.

This is excellent advice and far better than building an international student contact office in Carlton (where no assaults have been recorded) and which closes at 5.00pm. It’s better than building an Indian-Australian think tank at Melbourne University or any other piece of symbolism that falls somewhere between an apology and an after thought.

Another point is that contrary to recent reports, the Victoria Police do not keep race related statistics on crime. They never have. The reason is that in 99 per cent of cases, race is not a critical issue.

It’s difficult to draw definitive conclusions about the assaults except to say that in more mature democracies, an issue like this would draw both nations together to work out a joint solution. Here we see the obverse.

I recently travelled through Varanasi, one of the most famous spiritual centres for Hindus in India. I was sitting by the Ganges when a boy of 15 asked if I’d like a trip on a rowboat up to the Manikanika Ghat. I said “thanks, but no thanks”.

He said “you’re an Australian aren’t you?” I said I was. He asked me why Australians were attacking Indian students. I said a handful of Australians were very stupid. He asked, “but not all Australians?” “No, not all,” I replied.

He thought for a minute and said, “when I learn to read I won’t believe everything my brother tells me”.

Spoken with the wisdom of Solomon or rather, Saraswati.