So, do you still think the Aussies are God’s gift to the world?” a friend asked on email, another reminder that I’m probably never going to live down one of the biggest misdemeanours of my youth: being a huge fan of Mark Taylor’s (and later Steve Waugh’s) Australian cricket teams, even supporting them when they played India. Such fandom was never calculated to make you popular with friends, especially given the frequent off-field friction between the two teams and the inevitable construction of a pat narrative about Australians being racist bullies/cheats and Indians being nice guys and victims.
It feels odd to be asked such questions in the wake of the attacks on Indian students in Oz, especially because this is broad-generalisation territory all over again. For every allegation that Australia is a “racist country” (whatever such a sweeping statement might mean), there are counter-allegations all over the Internet to the effect that no one does prejudice like India does (whether against dark-skinned foreigners or its own minorities or “low-castes”). Take a look at websites like the Morung Express (http://tinyurl.com/qje2sj), an online newspaper from Nagaland, and you routinely see reports of discrimination towards north-easterners. And this from Zoelengthe.net (http://tinyurl.com/p832fn): “Racism in India is manifested in the matrimonial columns; when Dalits are punished for drawing water from the village well; and when teachers think teaching tribal boys and girls is like teaching donkeys.”
Ultimately, of course, neither allegation is a useful way of dealing with specific incidents of racial violence — they merely result in trading one form of jingoism for another. As a thoughtful post on the blog Simply 61 (http://tinyurl.com/rb2dz5) puts it: “Both countries need to sensitise their young people about the other’s cultures. The media could still redeem itself by focussing on this rather than beaming interviews of students who say they want to leave Australia. Most of them won’t... Ghettos are dangerous things but mental ghettos are even worse.”
A commenter on an Indiatimes blog (http://tinyurl.com/otkcnw) quips that Australians are “far more tolerant racially than Indians, but more adept at bullying, mugging or fleecing people irrespective of what race or nationality they are from. It is equal-opportunity assaulting”. Or maybe not. As someone says on a post by blogger Great Bong (http://tinyurl.com/qg4tyx) , “If I were a drug addict looking for money for a quick fix, I would probably mug a weak-looking brown guy, rather than, say, a guy who looked like Matthew Hayden... getting mugged is not racism, it is a law and order problem.” This view is echoed in a nuanced online column for the Sydney Morning Herald (http://tinyurl.com/phf43c) by Miranda Devine, who points at the crime-escalation problem in parts of Australia and says that perhaps the recent outcry is for the best. “If crying racism is the only way for Indian students to make their point — and possibly improve the law-and-order situation here — then all power to them.”
There is some unintentional humour in an otherwise interesting piece on Rediff titled “Tips: how not to be attacked in Australia” (http://tinyurl.com/nkj4rn) — some of the suggestions make you wonder exactly what Indians get up to when they travel overseas. “Whilst using public transport, listening to Tamil/Telugu songs on your ipod is fantastic, but not too loudly,” says one poster, while another advises that “most brawls in pubs happen due to excessive leching at women, so kindly avoid”. Apparently, one must also refrain from making loud public proclamations like “Your Warne was screwed by our Sachin”. And carry a camera wherever you go, goes another suggestion, because “police will do nothing unless you can identify the attackers, which is rarely possible because most of these whites look exactly the same”.