Udupi: Indians are Hardworking, Non-offensive, Mild-natured people – Australian Prof
Divvy Kant Upadhyay, Manipal
Daijiworld Media Network - Udupi/Manipal (GA)
Udupi, Jun 23: Live. Learn. Grow. Three words tagged with the official ‘Study in Australia’ campaign. For a country where close to 80,000 Indians study, the alleged racist attacks on a few of them may have brutally destroyed the faith in those three words.
Prof David Lovell, Head, School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales (ADFA Canberra Campus) shares the growing concern in an exclusive interview. Prof Lovell feels that the recent spate of attacks and the Indian media actively pursuing the issue is bound to dent the image of Australia as a preferred choice for higher education among students. “Although newspaper editorials in India have been balanced but I can sense pervasive feelings about Australia having become a dangerous place,” says the professor of politics hoping that “the quicker this gets over the better.”
On his first visit to India, Prof Lovell is “appalled” by the “highly deplorable” incidents because he feels “in Australia the general perception about Indians is that they are hardworking, non-offensive, mild natured, friendly people.” According to him, these attacks may have been racist in nature apart from being opportunistic crime. He explains, “Indian students attain substantial academic success and are a hard working lot; many of them may take up part-time jobs to meet their expenses. There is some amount of bitterness among the local population about such jobs going to the emigrants and students from outside. This bitterness combined with racist overtones and an inclination to commit crime may well be the reason leading to these attacks. Indian students working at odd hours and preferring the congested distant suburbs for the advantage of lower rents may have made them a vulnerable population.”
Rough estimates indicate one out of every five people in Australia is born outside it. This is not the first time the word racism is being attached to Australia. Prof Lovell hints racism might have a stronger history in Australia. “Australia is essentially an emigrant population, having begun as a European colony,” he says. Geographically it has a strange and distant location, thus always creating a sense of insecurity arising out of the constant fear of isolation. Australia has seen waves of emigrants from the Southern Europeans in 50s to the South East Asians in 70s and Chinese and Middle Eastern Muslims in 80/90s. Children of these emigrants are known to have performed brilliantly making best use of opportunities offered by the government. “Few decades ago we did have a notorious ‘White Australia’ policy, but thankfully now we have an official multi-cultural acceptance policy,” says the professor who feels that Australians are accommodating towards emigrants. Referring to politics-his area of expertise, Prof Lovell admits that Australia has ignored the ‘Giant’ that India is. His concern is evident when he says “India does not have the profile it deserves in Australia”.
On his first visit to India to explore possibilities of establishing links with the Manipal University in the field of Geopolitics and International Relations, Prof Lovell feels India and Australia should be logical partners. Listing facts that can act as ‘synergies’ between India and Australia, Prof Lovell points out that both nations are democracies, communicate easily in English, are open market economies apart from being essentially cricket crazy nations. One then wonders how China grew to be Australia’s strongest trade partner. Not just trade, more than 130-140 thousand Chinese students are pursuing their higher education in Australia.
Prof Lovell feels China opened up to the world much before India did and Australia caught up with it. “With China having a communist and authoritative background, a democratic and free market India is a better choice any day,” says Prof Lovell hinting that Australia needs to pay more attention to the situation in the Indian sub-continent and acknowledge the larger role India plays in Asia Pacific Security.
At Manipal University, Prof Lovell held talks with the head of department of Geopolitics Dr Aravind Kumar to establish academic links in areas like maritime security, nuclear issues, weapons of mass destruction, regional security architecture, international relations and global politics. The Manipal University already has a Memorandum of Understanding with the University of New South Wales which was ranked at 45 in the much-acclaimed Times List of World’s Best Universities last year. He also met Dr M V Kamath to discuss student and faculty exchanges between the Journalism and mass communication colleges of the two Universities.