Thread: India Australia Relations

Originally Posted by cdude

Australia Forum - Topix

One of the great good fortunes of being Australian is that we get gifted the single most useful language in the world without having to do any extra work. One of the unfortunate side effects is that the rest of the world can go through our dirty laundry a great deal more easily than we can go through theirs.

I thought this deserved a separate post. it is worth watching. It is a news report from SBS World News.

SBS Video Player

To summarise:

* The Indian High Commission in Canberra has reportedly handed up a report to the Indian Parliament claiming that only 1 in 7 of the attacks that have taken place over the past 14 months was racially motivated.

* Gautam Gupta disputes the figures (go back a page or so to find an article about him to judge his credibility).

* Indians who have lived in Australia longer than Mr Gupta agree with the figures & claim that Indians are NOT overrepresented in attacks - these are the people he says have a 'slave mentality'.

* The Indian external affairs minister notes that the rise in attacks corresponds with a huge increase in Indians coming to Australia to study (a 140% increase 2006 - 2008). The implication - more Indians here means numbers attacked will rise - more potential victims.

Originally Posted by axeman

Whether the media was implying that racist attacks were being 'orchestrated' by Anglo-Australians (I don't think I've come across such an accusation in a news article, although there might have been), I was not. What I had said/implied was that racist attacks were taking place, which they were.
As for the last line - it doesn't matter if there were no attacks until a year back or they increased in number, or the number has stayed the same. What matters to me is, if there has been one, I'd like to see the police admit it, and act on it. Not deny it.

Have the police denied that any racist attacks have taken place, or have that just commented on the evidence surrounding specific attacks? (links would be nice).

Was I wrong about the guy who burned himself for insurance money ? Of course. However, the point i was trying to make is that racist attacks were happening, which was something that was being denied everytime. You had your cops saying that there was no racial motivation at that time and then 2 months later back-track and say that there "might have been". Let's say I have no idea what I'm talking about, but soon after some of the incidents, your own guys admitted that there was a racial motivation to it.

The point about your original post was that you not only did what lots of other people have done - jump to a conclusion based on poor evidence - but you also did what you accuse the Vic Pol of doing - jumping to an incorrect conclusion.

I don't have a record of every statement that they have made, but I don't recall any statement that there were NO racist attacks. I recall many statements that there was no evidence that a particular crime was racially motivated. That is called waiting for the facts before making conclusion, which is what police are supposed to do.

It looks to me that you are setting up a straw man to knock down.

If you mean discriminatory, I agree with you. However, when most Indians are the same race, I find it difficult to believe that Indians are racist and discriminate racially towards each other.

Tronic covered this, but it is worth re-stating that 'racism' is a term covering discrimination based on ethnicity. There is a long history of 'racism' within Europe, though racially it is a good deal less diverse than India. Indeed, it is less than a century since national groups like British, French & German (to give a few examples) were referred to as 'races', though they are practically indistinguishable from each other. Hitler's racism saw 'slavs' marked as 'subhuman', though their racial distinctiveness from germans is dramatically less than that between numerous major Indian ethno-liguistic groups. And while we're at it, try telling a serb from a croat in a crowd. One fional confusion - anti-semitism is one of the most despised 'racial' prejudices, yet Jews are more racially diverse than either Europeans or Indians.

PS: I must state again, I do not believe that Australia has more racist people than any other country. What I am saying is that something needs to be done about attacks. Which is the same that I would say about any other country, India included.

Something was already being done. This isn't about Indian students, it is about street crime in Melbourne - a problem we already knew about. Most of the fuss about this has been whipped up by hysterical reporting & a 'Student Association' run by people who are not students & whose truthfulness & motives are HIGHLY questionable.

Originally Posted by Tronic

Thank you Bigfella, thats really good to hear, and the same applies to you if you ever decide to head up this way. Well I can promise you Punjab, Himachal and few surrounding states, anywhere else, and I'd be as much a tourist as you. )

I'd love to see India one day, but I have a long travel list & a small bank balance. maybe one day.

If there is now specific targeting of Indians here and there I believe it would be due to the hype created by the media in the first place. Its like giving some bad people, some bad ideas, which possibly they hadn't even thought of doing before.

There is some & there was before the media hype, though that probably made it worse. Some was 'soft targets, a small amount was because they were a differnt race, most was 'wrong place wrong time'.

Race is just a word; if you think that using the word "ethnic" discrimination is much better than using "racial" discrimination, than I think thats a little flawed thinking. Because ethnic or racial, there is no difference, its the exact same thing. The ground point is you're still discriminating on the basis of the person's appearance, or their origins. Discrimination is discrimination, ethnic or racial doesn't make any one better than the other.

Yup.