By
Swapan Dasgupta
After
the obligatory visits to the waterfront to see Harbour Bridge and the Opera
House, tourists in Sydney are encouraged to walk up George Street to the
imposing Queen Victoria Building—a stylish shopping arcade where you can also
treat yourself to English tea in the basement. What particularly caught my
attention was a bronze statue of the old Queen at the adjoining Bicentennial
Plaza. Apart from the never-amused Empress of India looking a shade younger and
less grim than she does in the forecourt of Calcutta’s Victoria Memorial, the
bronze is significant in one respect: Sydney is its third resting place since
it was commissioned at the beginning of the previous century.
Till
1949, the bronze had occupied a pride of place outside the Legislative Assembly
of Ireland in Dublin. Following the Republic’s departure from the Commonwealth,
the statue had been uprooted and presumably dumped in a bronze necropolis—like
the ones in Barrackpore and Coronation Park, Delhi. In 1987, Dublin offered the
forgotten relic to the Government of New South Wales which, gratefully
accepted, and recorded its gratitude to Ireland in a plaque on the plinth.
It
is tempting for South Block, always in need of inspirational ideas, to consider
whether the cause of India-Australian friendship will be enhanced by gifting a
discarded imperial bronze or two to cities in Australia that missed out on some
of the grander commemorative symbols of the ‘mother country’. The well-meaning
gesture, unfortunately, is bound to be misconstrued in a country that continues
to agonise over the Union Jack in a small corner of its national flag. What was
perhaps a casual decision in 1987, dictated as much by aesthetics as a sense of
history, will rekindle a debate that Australia seeks to avoid, but which resurfaces
periodically in some form of another.
That
Australia has been engaged in what someone once called “endlessly coming of
age” may seem surprising to those who nurture stereotypes of hard-working,
hard-drinking but essentially stupid and bigoted Bushmen dominating the
landscape—a carryover from its origins as a penal colony. When former Prime
Minister John Howard once described Sir Donald Bradman as the “greatest living
Australian”, he created a problem for the PR professionals entrusted with the
responsibility of selling modern Australia to the world. A sportsman could be
an entertainer, an icon of popular culture but the description “greatest living
Australian” was, they felt, a commentary on Australia’s unwillingness to go
beyond the frontier spirit. To the cosmopolitan mindset, harking on the Don, or
for that matter, on Rod Laver and referring to the Opera House irreverently as
“nuns in a scrum” are about as archaic and distracting as associating modern
India with maharajas, fakirs and Mother Teresa.
Since
the 1970s, when Britain’s membership of the European Union and a succession of
immigration laws put the Commonwealth connection in jeopardy, Australia has been
mindful of the need to evolve a distinctive identity—something more meaningful
than being the Britain of the southern hemisphere. The bid to grapple with what
the journalist James Cameron in 1971 detected as “an identity void” often had
farcical consequences: a competition to create a national anthem, a bid to
create a national dress and even a serious bid to inject something called
‘mateship’ into the Australian Constitution. In 1961, on the occasion of
Australia Day, a well-meaning attempt to depict authentic Australian values led
to bizarre tableaux: “This had been achieved by putting up a stuffed kangaroo
and emu on the right, a stuffed Aborigine on the left, and a coloured portrait
of the Queen in the centre.”
Additionally,
there have been attempts to rewrite history by stressing the autonomy of the
Australian experience. A former Prime Minister Paul Keating who had a way with
words and who was obsessed by the ‘identity’ question, tried to supplant the
importance of the Anzac Day commemoration of the massacre of Australian forces
in Gallipoli (in Turkey) by shifting focus to the defence of Kokoda against the
Japanese invasion of then then Australia-held Papua in 1942. To Keating, the
Australians who fought in Kokoda died defending not “the old world but the new
world—their world.”
Nor
should these attempts to recreate a nation to correspond with contemporary
priorities be mocked: India too is forever engaged in battles over history and
identity and generating contested perceptions of nationhood. In coping with
post-imperial realities, Australia has travelled a very long way.
First,
the White Australia immigration policy that a former Prime Minister Alfred
Deakin justified in 1901 as driven by a desire to create a community “inspired
by the same ideas…of a people possessing the same general cast of character,
tone of thought—the same Constitutional training” has been well and truly
junked. It is not that the process was
without hiccups but the point to note is that in 25 years, Australia has been
able to create a truly multiracial society. The debate today is not over Asian
immigration but the integration of the New Australians with the rest—a battle
between multiculturalism and common sense.
Secondly,
along with jettisoning the White Australia policy has been an acknowledgment of
the wrongs perpetrated on the Aborigines, the Old Australians. Even a casual
visitor to Australia will be struck by the very conscious attempt of both state
and society to include Aborigines as being crucial to the Australian
experience.
Thirdly,
Australia has taken important steps to make its economy more open, globalised
and competitive. It is fascinating to note the similarities between the
protectionist Australia of the 1980s and the India of the same period. It is
even more instructive to follow the career paths of Sir Robert Menzies (Prime
Minister from 1949 to 1966) and Jawaharlal Nehru (Prime Minister from 1947 to
1964). This comparison may be offensive to Nehruvians who are inclined to view
Menzies as a reactionary Anglophile. However, the rich debates on political
economy in both countries would suggest had Nehru been as receptive as Menzies
was to combining protectionism and welfare with encouragement of the private
sector, the post-Independence India story would have been more dazzling.
Finally,
Australia has emerged as a middle power of consequence and seems determined to
make its mark in the geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific region. For long, India
viewed this with suspicion, seeing Australia as an appendage of Anglo-American
interests. This view has changed but not changed sufficiently to facilitate
genuine trust. There is still a wariness centred on accumulated baggage from
another age.
Australia’s
muddle over its national identity has not helped matters. In seeming over
anxious to establish its Asian credentials, Australia has often projected a
contrived image of itself. The Anglo-Celtic and Judaeo-Christian underpinnings
of Australia are acknowledged in India and respected. Indians are not disoriented
by the symbolic role of the Queen, the English street names in cities, the
passion for cricket, the absence of a gun culture, voluble parliamentary
democracy, federalism and the rule of law. It reminds them of a common past
and, in some cases, an ideal.
There
has been a spate of big ticket Indian private sector investments in
Australia—mainly but not exclusively in the mining sector. This owes
considerably to Australia’s favourable business environment and its
non-turbulent political culture. But it
is also complemented by the fact that this is a country whose institutions and
culture they are familiar with. Indians are among the largest investors in the
United Kingdom for precisely these reasons. Australia can become a parallel
attraction.
The
Empire may be a contested legacy for both countries, but it is also a bond.
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