Mike BrownMike Brown, writer/ trainer from Australia, has spent 14 years in India mostly engaged with IofC training programmes at Asia Plateau, the IofC centre south of Mumbai. For over two decades, he has also been involved in the reconciliation movement in his country, as well as racial dialogues in the US. He currently serves with IofC International communications and the Action for Life leadership programme.

When Nitin Garg staggered into a Melbourne fast-food café where he worked, collapsed from stab wounds and died a few hours later, a storm was unleashed in the Indian media about the continuing ‘racist attacks’ against the 75,000 Indians studying in Australia.

The Australian government has been quick to respond to the growing number of attacks over the past year. Alarmed at the impact on Australia’s reputation as a quality education provider, with some 90,000 Indians contributing a big chunk of the AUD $15 billion earned through the education ‘export’ industry, a string of politicians (including the Deputy Prime Minister) and heads of universities have made their way to India, reassuring families and governments that security is being stepped up and that Australia is a safe, tolerant society in which to study. Indian media have been sponsored on visits to meet community and education leaders. Still, enrolments for the coming year have plunged 45% from India, and 20% elsewhere.

As an Australian who has lived 14 years in India supporting Indians in their efforts towards social change in India, and having also worked for two decades to shift deep-seated prejudices in Australia, I must say, up front, that I am deeply sorry and ashamed.

But I am not the only one. Residents in the suburb where Garg died held a candlelight vigil to assure their Indian neighbours that they are valued and protected. Over Christmas Indian students were given hospitality in Australian homes. An official of the Australian High Commission in Delhi went to Garg’s funeral in Punjab to express regret to the family. Editorials and community leaders have forthrightly condemned the brutal attacks. Six months ago, student presidents of four Melbourne universities signed a joint statement saying they were ‘extremely ashamed of the negative attitudes and actions which lie behind these (attacks)’, and pledged themselves ‘to act decisively in order to build a more genuine and safe community recognising that a change of heart towards those who are different… can help transform the situation’. (see below)

The critical issue is whether the attacks are, in fact, racially motivated or simply random street violence. Police officials say that, in nearly all cases, there is no evidence of racial motive. A Cabinet Minister, unhelpfully, claimed that statistics show Indians are at no more risk here than in Mumbai or Delhi. Long-term Indian residents in Australia (of whom there are many) are among the most vocal, defending the multi-cultural society in which they live. A Bengali shop owner in Adelaide told me this week that, while many muggings and thefts happened around him, not once in 20 years had he been insulted or assaulted. So what’s going on?

One explanation is that immigration rules have been relaxed, enabling foreign students to gain resident status by entering various training institutes, for example in the hospitality industry, to meet Australia’s labour shortages. So there has been a surge of Indian middle class families sending their sons – often borrowing huge sums – to Australia in the hope of bringing their families later. Typically, they work in food outlets, often till late at night, and return to cheap accommodation in lower socio-economic suburbs, making them easy targets for theft and violence outside railways stations where most of the attacks have taken place.

But for officials and police to continually deny that racism partly motivate the attacks is coldly defensive. Back in the Fifties, my parents – because of their humanitarian convictions – helped to found an ‘Australian-Asian Association’. I grew up with Indian curries, prepared by my mother for Asian students and various diplomats. Some of the ‘Colombo Plan’ Asian students who stayed in our home are now leaders of professions in their own countries. Yet, without doubt, they experienced racial prejudice during that time. Our history is sadly mired by the discriminatory White Australia Policy, founded right at the start of our nation to exclude immigrant Chinese. Not until the Sixties was it removed from law and replaced with proactive multicultural policies.

Yet laws alone do not change hearts and attitudes. Despite the Prime Minister’s apology to Aboriginal people, and huge spending on programmes to address their disadvantage, we know that prejudice and injustices persist. Leadership can, however, help bring healing– or the opposite. Much of the political debate around asylum seekers plays on prejudicial fear and, in turn, promotes it. At the height of the controversy over treatment of Indian students, official papers released from Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser’s government showed how his leadership defied research warning that a flood of Cambodian and Vietnamese ‘boat people’ would inflame community tensions. But with bi-partisan agreement, Australia welcomed more Indo-Chinese refugees per head of population than any other nation. Thousands of Australians rose behind the compassionate policy of their government to help settle them into communities.

But now, when Australian troops in riot gear are used to turn away today’s ‘boat people’ from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, and politicians make capital out of ‘securing national borders’ by force if necessary, might that example not encourage street youth gangs to put their boot in on some hapless dark-skinned student returning at midnight after working in a café or service station? Easy pickings; and excused by the same crude mentality of ‘keeping Australia for ourselves’.

The sort of humane leadership example we need was demonstrated by Nitin Garg’s own family. Speaking at his funeral a family member said Indians and Australians must live in harmony: ‘I request them, rather I appeal them they should live altogether with love. Like brothers, like sisters and like everybody. Like a family.’

I, for one, will follow their example.

NOTE: Individuals of many cultures, nationalities, religions, and beliefs are actively involved with Initiatives of Change. These commentaries represent the views of the writer and not necessarily those of Initiatives of Change as a whole.