Grant Wyet writes in the Diplomat-
There is palpable emerging intimacy between Australia and India. This includes a recently signed new trade deal — the first India has signed with a developed country in over a decade — strengthening security ties, major investment from Australia in India, and expanding people-to-people links, including India now being Australia’s largest source of migrants. Yet this burgeoning relationship is not progressing without its controversies.
Because China wants to sink the Quad. Thus there is some money available for 'controversy'.
In recent weeks a group of 13 academics who were fellows at the Australia India Institute (AII) based at the University of Melbourne collectively resigned their affiliations, claiming that restrictions were being placed on their academic freedom and alleging interference from the Indian High Commission in Canberra. The group also expressed concerns that the institute was prioritizing the bilateral relationship over academic research.
They were pretending that the Institute wasn't dedicated to enhancing Australian Indian ties rather than promoting anti-Indian propaganda.
The AII was established in 2008 with a $6 million grant from the federal government,
after Indian students were racially attacked and the Indian TV viewing population went crazy. Australia makes money off Indian students. This money was spent for P.R purposes.
and continues to receive funding from both the federal and Victorian state governments, as well as from the University of Melbourne and private donors.
Because those entities benefit by promoting good ties with India.
It is currently the only center in Australia that is dedicated exclusively to the study of India, understanding the relationship between India and Australia, and supporting the relationship between the two countries.
Why the fuck would any country need such a center? Are Australians stupider than kangaroos? Do they not know about the internet?
Yet it is within this mission where the institute is finding conflict. As a branch of the University of Melbourne, academic inquiry should be its primary concern.
No. Its primary concern should be, as it says, to enhance Indo-Australian ties. The University earns good money from Indian students. It wastes money on shitty lecturers with woke agendas. It should sack the nutters and double down on STEM subject research. Inquiry has nothing to do with repeating stupid lies.
Yet if the institute instead sees itself as a facilitator of the relationship between Australia and India, then research that may upset the current Indian government of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) becomes problematic.
What is 'problematic' is the notion that repeating stupid lies counts as 'research'.
As the scholars wrote in their collective resignation letter: “As experts on India,
Experts?! Are you fucking kidding me! Puroshotama Billimoria is as stupid as shit. But at least he is alsli desi. The rest are retards of an abject sort. Some mothers do 'ave 'em. Shame, but there it is.
we have doubts that [the AII’s] quasi-diplomatic focus is consistent with, and furthers, the mission of the University.”
An Australian campus is not a good place from which to fight supposed Fascism in a far away country. Why pretend that is its mission? America is big and influential. Arguably, American academics organizing an anti-Indian BDS type campaign might have some influence on India. But Australia is small. It needs India more than India needs Australia. Still, there may be some Chinese money for this shite.
One incident cited by the resigning group was the refusal by the AII to publish an article on the attempt to decapitate a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Melbourne.
It claimed that Gandhi was racist against Africans and that he was prejudiced against Dalits in India. It states- ' Today, Gandhi’s racist past is linked to global anti-racist justice movements, like Black Lives Matter, as one of the many historical figures that represent “anti-Black racism on Black people, on Black bodies”.' It is a good thing that an Institute dedicated to enhancing ties between Australia and India refused to publish this nonsense.
Grant Wyeth next gives us the suggestio falsi that the article uncovered evidence that Indian nationalists had decapitated the statue.
Within the wider Hindutva movement of the BJP there has been an attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of Gandhi’s assassin, Nathurum Godse. Rather than the driving moral force behind India’s independence movement, Gandhi is now seen by some Hindu nationalists as an appeaser of the country’s Muslim minority. It is this perspective that led to the attack on Gandhi’s statue.
Does Wyeth believe a racist attack on the statue of a brown dude in his own City was actually the work of 'Hindu nationalists'? Does he not know that the statue was installed by people of that description? Incidentally, they have a really cool Ganapati statue with an absent torso. No doubt Wyeth thinks it too was vandalized by militant Hindus.
Given that this issue is central to the modern contest over what kind of state India should be – a secular democracy with respect for all religious groups or one that privileges its Hindu majority and excludes, often violently, all others
This was resolved in 1948. India passed laws barring the return of Muslim refugees. Non-Muslim refugees got citizenship. Muslims lost reservations and any type of affirmative action. Initially only Hindus got them but this was later extended to first Sikhs and then Buddhists. Muslims are still excluded.
– and that agitation against Indian secularism had found an outlet within the diaspora, this should have been of critical importance to the AII.
Why? How would it enhance ties between Australia and India?
Instead, reluctance to publish the article suggests either a self-censoring instinct to tip-toe around the sensitivities of the BJP,
No. The sensitivities are those of the people and the Government of India.
or direct submission to its pressures.
Why does Wyeth assume that this Institute has a different opinion from shitty little liars than everybody else?
The article was subsequently published by Pursuit, a different University of Melbourne publication.
So what? It is still shit.
As highlighted by Dilpreet Kaur in South Asia Today, debate over Australia’s emerging relationship with India has been playing out within the pages of Australian Foreign Affairs magazine, with the University of Melbourne’s deputy vice chancellor (international) – and AII board member – Michael Wesley a central figure. In a recent issue of the publication, Wesley argued in an article titled “Pivot to India: Our next great and powerful friend?” that India is a natural partner for Australia with significant commonalities, and that the relationship should be primarily driven by maritime security in the Indian Ocean.
Because of Quad. I hope Wyeth gets some Chinese money for this.
In the following issue, Ian Woolford, lecturer in Hindi at La Trobe University, wrote a response saying that Wesley was overlooking the lack of compatibility that the BJP’s Hindutva ideology has with Australia’s liberal democracy,
which fucked over Aborigines but good and maintained a 'White Australia' policy into the Seventies.
and that this may create a serious impediment to the relationship.
Woolford is American. America is powerful. It can pick and choose its partners- up to a point- but it too has to be nice to India while Quad remains a possibility. But Australia does not have that luxury. The fact is India may well do its own deal with China. Then Whitey will be running scared in the region. Australia and New Zealand will have to truckle to Orientals.
In his own reply, Wesley asserted that Woolford “will wait a long time before Australia makes human rights or democracy a central plank of its foreign policy. One of the most consistent elements in Australian foreign policy is a willingness to overlook a foreign regime’s foibles if Australia has a strong interest in maintaining stable and positive relations.”
Wesley is Australian. Also he isn't a guy who actually wanted to be a singer but then got sidetracked and ended up teaching a language he can't speak properly in a country where there is no interest in learning it.
Why is the Diplomat magazine publishing this shite? Oh. It's a shite e-zine owned by an Ozzie with a translation business in Tokyo. His compensation may well be in excess of 60,000 dollars per annum- a truly princely sum. Still, fair play to him. At least he isn't the current Assistant to the Deputy Director of the Institute of Socioproctology. I used to be the Deputy Assistant Director but was demoted because of a 'Me-too' allegation of sexual harassment.
Public debates over international relations are often mired in making the distinction between interests and values. Yet for liberal democracies like Australia this is always a false dichotomy because its interests and values are intrinsically linked.
They were intrinsically linked to killing dark colored people and grabbing their land.
A liberal democracy’s values create its interests, and trying to separate the two undermines both.
Which is why India should have nothing to do with Australia. Let the Chinese conquer it. James Pach can set up a Translation Bureau for the dissemination of Chinese Communist propaganda. Sadly, ex-fellows of the AII won't be employable in that enterprise even if they have already started to learn Mandarin. Why? They are too stupid.
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