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Australia is handling India badly

By Graham Cooke - posted Monday, 10 August 2009


“The Labor policy can only grow as an obstacle to closer relations as India brings more nuclear power plants on line in coming years,” he says.

Layton believes the overall situation is not yet irretrievable, with the incidents involving attacks on Indian students being met with a grain of salt by more sophisticated Indians.

“The refrain I have heard is ‘well, do you see how we Indians treat our people in our own country’?” she says.

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“The Indian media is typically prone to hyperventilation and they haven’t let themselves down on this issue. There are frequently reports of violence against Indian students in Australia in what I would consider to be the more tabloidesque papers, but educated Indians realise that their media over-dramatises things at the best of times.”

Assistant Professor Happymon Jacob of the Centre for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament, at Jawaharlal Nehru University, in New Delhi, says that Indian academia has been responsible in not coming out with knee-jerk reactions to events in Australia.

“They do not see it in terms of racism or anything like that, but mere crimes that need to be checked.” he says.

Layton does not believe that there need not be long-term damage to Australia’s trade interests or the overall relationship with the Indian Government.

“This is more an issue about perceptions, and about how Australia as a country appears to Indians,” she says. “The effort our government has put in to mitigate the fallout from this has been well received.”

Now, however, Indians are confronted by a Mandarin-speaking Australian Prime Minister who appears to be putting an awful lot of eggs in the China basket. One Indian official in Canberra, who did not wish to be named, said Indians are watching the situation over the arrest of Australian mining executive Stern Hu in China with interest.

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“Some people see this as a litmus test of just how much Australia is willing to let itself be pushed around in order to preserve its trading relationship with China,” he says.

Layton says there is a much more balanced view of China in India, especially among the younger generation for whom the 1962 war between the two is part of ancient history. “They understand that co-operation with China is mutually beneficial and there is a highly negative cost to any antagonistic relationship with the country,” she says.

“Even so, there is an overarching view that Australia will make concession to China that it would never make to India.”

Weigold says India has every reason to treat Australia with suspicion. “From our reaction to their nuclear program, to selling Mirage jets to Pakistan, now the problem with students, it just goes on and on,” she says.

“It seems to me that India is in a position where we need it more than it needs us, and as long as we stick with the principles of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and don’t sell it uranium, India is probably quite rightly, going to keep us at arms’ length.

“It’s just another example of the parlous state of our current relationship.”

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About the Author

Graham Cooke has been a journalist for more than four decades, having lived in England, Northern Ireland, New Zealand and Australia, for a lengthy period covering the diplomatic round for The Canberra Times.


He has travelled to and reported on events in more than 20 countries, including an extended stay in the Middle East. Based in Canberra, where he obtains casual employment as a speech writer in the Australian Public Service, he continues to find occasional assignments overseas, supporting the coverage of international news organisations.

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