Manmohan Singh, India’s respected prime minister, sits in the upper house of parliament. Only last week, for example, Australia’s best known election analyst, Malcolm Mackerras, celebrated the fact that the Indian political system has overcome a deficiency attributed to the Westminster model of government. Since the days of Ben Chifley and Jawaharlal Nehru, wise folk in both countries have seen that Australians and Indians have unique things in common and can work with each other as few countries can. It needs friends with genuine common interests. Why should these attacks and their handling be of very, very serious concern to Australians who look to the future of this country? Why should far-sighted Australians want a relationship with India that has more “substance”? The answer is enlightened self-interest.Īustralia is a population pimple on the Asia–Pacific elephant. And all of this increases the possibility of copy-cat crimes.
Media pingpong is a great game: Australian outlets pick up Indian stories, which bring out wackier voices in Australian public life, which in turn generate equally wacky Indian replies. The attacks have also become a top story in India’s huge newspaper industry, which sells ninety million copies a day in a dozen languages. They make tasty morsels for a vast, 200-channel Indian television industry, hungry for stories. The robberies and assaults undermine these developments and have taken on a nasty life of their own. In the past three or four years, such “substance” seemed to be arriving in the form of wider and deeper human connections, driven mightily (though not entirely) by the 100,000 students from India and its neighbours now studying here. (Ever had your pocket picked in another country? Did you know what to do?)įor as long as India has been independent, Australians with an eye to Australia’s long-term interests have sought to put “substance” into the Australia–India relationship. They work late, have nice electronic gear and (the thinking might go) are poorly equipped to complain. In this case, young thugs and goons who come out at night to rob and terrify for fun and profit have stumbled across new targets: students and workers from India and other South Asian countries.
JUST WHEN you think you’re on the brink of something good, bad things happen.
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