Type in the word "attacks" on Google and the first three suggestions that appear are variations of "attacks on Indians in Australia". Not a day goes by without an Indian student, worker, or resident of Australia being attacked-- often very brutally and violently-- by Australians. And yet, some (though not all) Australian officials and politicians insist that the attacks are not indications of racism, they are functions of the fact that Indians live in sketchy neighborhoods and the like. What is the fear and worry on the part of Australians in admitting that these are racist attacks? Would doing so mean acknowledging that this ugliness is part and parcel of Australian society?
I cannot help think that if Australians or Westerners had similarly been targeted in India, there would have been a spate of articles attributing it to India's backwardness, stagnation, lack of civic values, and the like. One such incident involving a Muslim or country with a Muslim population, and the press in the US, UK, Australia, and other Western nations goes beserk with sweeping generalizations about Islam and the Muslim world. Yet the same generalizations are never offered about Western nations-- we are told that such incidents are always exceptions to a general ethos of civility, never that they are proof of lack of such civility.
Friday, September 25, 2009
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5 comments:
I think you make a very hasty comment; and generalise too much when you group together UK, US and Australia. These are all very different, especially, in the way race-relationships have been forged.
I also think you generalise way too much when you talk about safety of foreigners in India. I am a bit surprised that one who finds 24-hours news channel journalists dodgy in most instances would not, at least, anticipate that perhaps the Indian media is, yet again, not really considering the context of the situation, and much worse, the consequence of the hype and hangama that they have created.
I do not deny and will definitely never deny that there is something terribly horribly amiss; and nor would I claim that Australians are saints who never see the color of you skin; but I think this would have been a perfect opportunity of some seriously good journalism and an opportunity to make a positive impact...
i look forward to your familiarising yourself with the evolution of current society in Australia going back to the European settlement, the consequence of the second world war, the SBS, the aborignal movement and Keating and the recent years of John Howard, and more recently the ministers in the current government and not the least, the percieved and actual attitude of indians in australia. Please bear in mind, i do not say that the percieved and actual attitude of indian is anything bad or wrong (or that "they were asking for it" - no, no one ever asks for it), but it is still a part of the jigsaw puzzle that lies unsolved before us.
If nothing else, I would like you to at least follow the history of the issue in Australian media - which has some rather senior journalists from Indian origin.
Look I am just saying, make yourself aware, think & analyse and then speak - you words have power to make a consequence.
This(http://www.theage.com.au/national/brumby-unmoved-on-fugitive-20090929-gb3s.html) might be interesting
Rohit,
Even though I have been living in Melbourne for over 20 tears, I cannot say that I have any sort of expertise on Australian history or developments here except some of my personal experiences and what I read in newspapers.
I did experience some racism when I )arrived here in 1988 ( and also some casteism in India and I also saw a bit of how African students were treated in India. We were called black dogs, and had 'black c..ts' written in front of our house. We moved suburbs, The Age started a campain against racism in Austraian Rules Football and overall things improved. The children seemed more resilent, and they did ok in school and seemed to get jobs even before the locals did. Meanwhile education business started and lot of money making institutions (quite a few by Indians ) started giving degress in hospitality courses and such. My impression is that most of the institutions are money spinning institutions, some of them send agents to India and some have agents in India who produce bogus cetificates to get admissions and make all sorts of promises. I think that most of the students come with the hope of getting resident visas later on and this does work for many of them. The government generally seems happy since it brings a lot of money, about 15 billion dollars an year and have not been too strict with these institutions. Many Indian students may not bring money after the first year, but they provide cheap labour and keep up the rents living often in substandard houses. There are no orientation courses for the students (except for a few who may go to standard universities), they generally stay with other students sometimes with those who come from the same areas (caste, region, vegetarianism and other considerations) and start lookng for jobs within a few months. There is not much commnity support from other Indians, may be because there were not that many well settled Indians until a few years ago. The visibility of foreign students, often in groups talking loudly in their own languages is high compared to 20 years ago. Just last week one of my daughters heard older Australians complaining about too many foreigners in a shopping centre and asked the persons to drop dead.
What can be done? I think most of these institutions are unworthy and should be closed. Another suggestion is that there should be limits to the percentages of foreign students ( and also from each country. I know some institutions where all the students are Indian. Once I asked whether they could find some part time work for a new student and they offered him a teaching job!). If the institutions have a certain percentage of local students, they cannot be too lax with standards). Better information and orientation courses before they come here and after. The govt. has support for multicultural institutions and probably local Indians can pitch in with a community centre or two to help the newcomers. Of course all this may make the courses more expensive (apart from migrant visas, this is another reason why Indian students come here). One can also enquire why Chinese students did not face as many attacks as Indian students. So, I think there are many concrete steps which both the Australian gvt. and Indian govt. can take to improve the situation.
Coming back to my experiences, one of daughters recently had to change her jogging route because some Indians were heckling her.
Neha and Prof. Swarup,
Thanks very much for your detailed responses which raise many urgent issues that deserve examination and further discussion. I hope to respond to some of these issues in a separate post later so that I may attempt to do justice to them.
Best regards
Rohit
Professor Chopra,
Please do not take my views too seriously. As a mathematician and by temperament, I am used to think about clear cut problems amenable to logic and hard work. I find social problems too complex and what we say and do type of loops affect the outcomes and our views are limited by our cognitive limiations (at least in my case). It is difficult to think about each topic like a research topic even when the topic is if immediate interest and these discussions with people of different backgrounds help to see a bit better.
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