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Magazine
WALKABOUT IN OZ
Australia Fair
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S. MUTHIAH discovers the diverse nature of the population of Australia. The first in a series of articles.
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PARVATHI-RAMA
Melting pot -- the Chinese gateway to a walkway mall of Far Eastern restaurants in Chinatown, Australia.
SHE was a tall, strapping, mousy-blonde-haired woman in her early fifties. She was working on a book on Anglo-Indians and had come to meet me in Melbourne to talk about Fort St. George where the first substantial Anglo-Indian community had its beginnings. Her Anglo-Celtic looks made me wonder aloud what her interest in Anglo-Indians was. "My husband is Anglo-Indian, the friend I'm working with on the book is Anglo-Indian and," she softly added, "my grandmother was Aborigine." And that was the first time I heard the word spoken during the first two weeks of my stay in Australia. The word appeared to have vanished from the local vocabulary as much as the Aborigines had become the lost people.
Confined to the fringes
In the weeks that followed, I tried to pick up their trail — and found most people, Asians no exception, confine them to the fringes of cities or the wilderness, seeing them as layabouts addicted to drink and drugs and quarrelsomeness. It was a couple of Sri Lankans, old newspaper colleagues, who began to give me a fuller picture of a shameful history that Australia had swept under the carpet, till Australia Day 1988, the 200th anniversary of Anglo-Celtic settlement. One had been in government service, the other had long studied the Aborigine issue — and both were quick to point out that on the 150th anniversary of Captain Arthur Phillip's landing in Sydney, the real Australians were brought in to re-enact "menacing savages" attempting to beat off the forces of "civilisation" determined to acquire for Empire a new continent. Only the first shots of the soldiers of that "First Fleet" were not fired. On that Australia Day in 1938, Aboriginal protest began with the declaration of a Day of Mourning. Fifty years later, on Bicentenary Day, the two had watched the Aborigines' cry for freedom being heard round the world as thousands of the First Australians marched through the streets in protest even as the official celebrations went on in and around Sydney Cove.
The `Stolen Generation'
Today, the Indigenous Australians — the Aborigines and the Torres Strait Islanders — number around 5,00,000, about 2.5 per cent of Australia's 20 million population. Believed to have come from South Asia 1,20,000 years ago, they have, it has been assessed, made Australia their home for the past 40,000 years, each of their 500 tribes marking its territory into which no other tribe would stray. When the "First Fleet" arrived with its 750 convicts and their guards, it is estimated there were between 3,00,000 and 7,50,000 Aborigines. Disease brought by the new settlers and violent warfare, as the Anglo-Celts in later years moved in to settle in the more fertile areas of a largely desert land, virtually decimated the Indigenous people. This and all other land was declared by the British Government as terra nullius, empty land owned by no one and, as a consequence, fair acreage for anyone whom it wanted to settle on it. It has been only since the 1970s that various court decisions and enactments have given the Aborigines rights to claim title to land, the strongest as late as 1992. The Census of 1971 was the first to give them an identity!
Dispossessed of their land, disempowered of their rights, their cultural traditions threatened by being confined to pastoral or mission "stations", the last straw in what might be described as insidious genocide was the Aborigines Protection Act of 1901, when Aborigine children of mixed (white sired) blood were plucked from their homes and put into white homes to "improve" themselves while working virtually as slave labour. The numbers of the "Stolen Generation" were added to till 1972, when the assimilation policy aimed at making the Indigenous People give up their cultural heritage and accept the majority's was given up, though it continued in a more voluntary form till the 1980s!
A rethink
Rethinking about the horrific Aborigine policies of the previous 150 years began only in the last 1950s. They won the right to vote in federal elections in 1962 and in State elections in the next few years. During the latter part of that decade, the Commonwealth of Australia, into which the six original Australian colonies had federated as States in 1901, enacted legislation that gave it a greater say in Aboriginal matters, till then a State subject. Further agitation by Civil Rightists, however, led to action only in 1990 with the establishment of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. Today, nearly A$2 billion is being annually funnelled into ATSIC and similar quasi-government organisations for Aboriginal "improvement", even if most of it is wasted on administrative charges and overheads. The Aboriginal landbase is increasing, with about 15 per cent of leasehold title held by them. And the Aboriginal population is increasing with more of those of mixed blood coming out into the open. Today, the Census considers as Aborigine anyone who declares himself as Aborigine and who has at least one Aboriginal ancestor. Less than 2,00,000 of today's Aboriginal population is recognisably "pure", it is estimated; but there could be many more than the other 3,00,000 who could be "passing", for there is still covert discrimination against people seen as poor employees by those in a nation that prides itself on being one of the hardest working in the world. It's a discrimination that becomes aggressively overt, especially when the police enter the picture. But now the Aborigines are more inclined to fight back as when they recently did, after a death in custody of Palm Island, once a penal settlement for Aborigines off Queensland. That it was a death that now would get noticed I could see from the newspaper spreads while I was there. Nevertheless, the Aborigines remain the most marginalised people in a country of great prosperity.
Tracing lineage is popular
The descendants of those who at first could not come to terms with the Aborigines, and later immigrants of the same Anglo-Celtic stock, are still the majority in Australia. Their beginnings were in the more than 1,60,000 who were shipped out from England in chains till well into the 19th Century; men, women and children for whom the jails of Britain and Canada had no room. They in time became virtual slave labour for the "squatters", the younger sons of Britain's landed gentry who acquired and developed large tracts of land, making fortunes in the process. Today, tracing family histories has become popular among the Australians and I was to learn from one such tracker that it is increasingly becoming a badge of honour to discover "The Stain" in your lineage, a reference to convict ancestry.
Descendants of convicts and landed gentry and the few Anglo-Celts who migrated in the first half of the 20th Century fleeing depression and anaemic economic conditions, it was soon found, were not enough to build Australia into a strong nation — particularly after the threat from the Japanese in the 1940s. "Populate or Perish" was the slogan of Immigration Minister Arthur Calwell when on July 21, 1947, he said, "We have 25 years at most to populate this country before the yellow races are down upon us." And, he added, "It would be far better for us to have in Australia 20 or 30 million people of 100 per cent white extraction than ... seven million people who are 98 per cent British." Under what was known as the White Australia policy, "displaced persons" from war-torn Europe were welcomed in their numbers. Fair-haired Balts were the first arrivals, but 2,00,000 of them were not enough, so Australia, in the early 1950s, began scouring southern Europe — even if the Mediterranean people were not to be exactly welcomed — and Britain, from where there came the "Ten Pound Poms", who paid $10 and got assisted passage to Australia. All were to provide cheap labour for a fast developing country.
The Anglo-Indians
There also came the Anglo-Indians and their Ceylon equivalent, tbe Burghers. At a couple of reunions in Melbourne with former Burgher colleagues, many of whom I hadn't seen for 40 years, they reminisced about the hard times many of them had had at Immigration centres. "British labourers who could hardly speak English were waved in, whereas if even one of us in the family was slightly swarthy, we were given a rough time." In fact, in 1951, the Immigration Department informed its officers in Colombo that they "should not authorise the entry of persons who are likely to cause adverse comment on arrival here or be restricted from landing by any immigration officers at ports, as being predominantly non-European in appearance." Yet, as one of those Burgher friends commented, "there's hardly a well-known school or university in Australia without a Burgher or Anglo-Indian on its teaching staff".
Multi-culturalism to stay
The White Australia Policy, brought in by the Immigrants Restriction Act in 1901 began changing in the 1960s and ended in 1971. But though since the 1990s there is said to be a tightening up of the points system for Asian and African migrants — and there has far long been non-recognition of many of their qualifications — the day of multiculturalism is here. And a highly visible presence of South, Southeast and Far Eastern Asians is what strikes you in urban areas. What few of them know, however, is that there were migrants from their parts of Asia as early as the mid-19th Century.
Pathan and Baluchi camelteers (now described as Afghans) were brought in together with about 150 camels from 1860 to 1865 to penetrate, explore and help develop the wilderness of central and western Australia. In due course, there were 3,000 "Afghan" camelteers between Perth and Brisbane. Many of their descendants still live in this area, running camel transport outfits among other businesses, while over 1,00,000 camels from that "Afghan" stock now run wild in the Australian desert.
Indian immigration
Indian immigration, starting in 1816 went on in desultory fashion till the 1860s, most of the immigrants arriving with private British residents as servants or labourers. There were also a few Anglo-Indians in the 1840s. Then, between 1860 and 1900, large numbers of Sikhs and Punjabi Muslims arrived in the country, Indians in the country being estimated at around 3,000 in 1901. The Sikhs came mainly to work in sugarcane, banana and potato farms. Their descendants are now major players in sugarcane and banana cultivation in Queensland and northern New South Wales. About 350 descendants of the early Sikhs have made Woolgoolga in New South Wales (NSW) a major banana-growing area. Punjabi Muslims were mainly pedlars who, till the 1940s, travelled in the rural areas hawking a variety of textiles and utensils.
In the late 1800s, Sinhalese, from the southern districts where Galle used to be Ceylon's main port, were brought out to work in the sugar plantations and in the pearl fisheries in the Torres Strait. A Sinhalese community was established on Thursday Island in the Strait and also in the pearling centre of Broome in Western Australia. Today, the Mendis and Wimalaratne families, descended from the Thursday Island settlers, remain important figures in Australia's jewellery business. A few Burghess too date back to the 1880s.
The numbers of both Indians and Sri Lankans swelled after the White Australia policy was abandoned and it is estimated about 2,00,000 Indians now live in the country, including about 50,000 Anglo Indians and 20,000 Sikhs. There are also a large number of Fijian Indians and Indians from Southeast Asia. Most of the post-1970s immigrants are professionals. And with IT investment being welcomed by every state, their numbers will increase. People of Sri Lankan origin number about 1,50,000, almost equally divided between the earliest migrants, the Burghers, the Sinhalese professionals, including around 1,000 mechanics and chefs — reflecting Australia's need for skilled workers — and the Tamils fleeing the island after 1983.
From 100 countries
Of Australia's nearly two million Asians, almost as many as the Southern and Eastern Europeans, about 1/3 are Chinese and 1/5 are Southeast Asians, mainly Vietnamese. The earliest Chinese migration was after gold was discovered in 1851, and at the height of the gold rush there were about 4,000 Chinese in the Ballarat and Bendigo areas, where some of their descendants remain.
Other Chinese came to work on various development projects. But the largest number came in recent years, like the Vietnamese "boat people".
Today, Australia has people from over 100 countries belonging to nearly double that number of ethnic groups, speaking 100 languages and belonging to just about every religion in the world. It offers over 100 cuisines, newspapers in 72 languages, and stores that sell the special requirements of at least 20 of the major Asian immigrant communities. There are about 200 "Indian" provision stores, as many "Indian" restaurants and about 50 saree shops in Sydney and its suburbs and an almost equal number in and around Melbourne, the two main centres of Indian and Sri Lankan settlement. Significantly, a large number of the provision stores, most of them looking like our neighbourhood kadais and plastered with posters, are run by Sri Lankan Tamils — who speak Sinhalese fluently and also stock such Pacific Islander requirements as taro, cassava and yams. Every one of them also stocks the Ultra grinder and the Preethi and Sumeet mixies, but none of these white goods carries a guarantee, because of no service centres being available. The stores also stock a variety of free newspapers, for Indians, Sri Lankan Tamils (most of them Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam-leaning) and other Sri Lankans. They are also the only places where Sinhalese, Tamils and Burghers meet, for after 1983 the three groups, like many other warring groups from other parts of the world, go their separate ways.
Functions, festivals
This is also an Australia where the New Australians are encouraged to hold their festivals publicly and get the community involved. Deepavali and Navaratri see functions held in large public spaces — like the Flemington Racecourse where the Melbourne Cup is run, Sydney Olympic Park and the Federal Parliament in Canberra — and thousands gather for the melas. And here too places of worship sprout, Hindu and Buddhist temples, mosque and Sikh gurudwaras. Sydney has its Helensburgh temple, with Venkateswara presiding in one half and Siva in the other, the "Sydney Murugan" temple, a Ganesha temple, the Hari Krishna Temple and the Mukti-Gupteshwar mandir, designed as an underground cave temple and now minus its statue of Ganesha recently stolen. Melbourne has similar temples. They're all rather different from ours, with two or three of the main deities at one end of a large hall and the prakaram around it, with quarters for priests brought out from India on three-year contracts, cafeterias and meeting rooms. The dominant influence, except in North Indian shrines, is Sri Lankan Tamil, they running a rather more efficient organisation than Indian managements.
Canterbury, near Sydney, like other urban suburbs with dominant and distinct immigrant populations, may sing one song with its self-description, "City of Cultural Diversity", reflecting its Fijian, Lebanese and other ethnic mix, but there's another one I hear. With all this variety, the one impression that remains strong is watching scores of East Asian girls walking out with European men and even the occasional 4'11" South Asian girl and 6'3" rugby-type Anglo-Celt strolling with arms around each other. And that is indicative of a possible Eurasian Australian identity being not too far off. In 1984, Foreign Minister Bill Hayden thought that in 20 years "we'll become a predominantly Eurasian country".
In the 1990s, other authorities thought it might take two generations. Certainly, 50 years from now I think Australia Fair will be a blend of many skin shades. And by then the Aborigines too may well be a part of a mixed mainstream.
(To be continued)
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