Australia - European Heritage of Darkness - Vestiges of Colonialism

For a while it did look like the world was getting better, with a growing light within - but whenever there is a Descent of Light the darkness of nether wells up and fights it.

And now there is the new outbreak of a plague of spirit of darkness inherited from Europe haunting the world again, especially continental Europe and the regions occupied by colonial settlers from UK and Europe. Racism this time in various has manifested in various episodes against Asians, mainly from India.

A few decades ago, a housemate from Australia, needless to say one of European colonialist origin (those days Australia did not allow any other settlers, and it was perhaps not too long after their horrible policies to the native population of the continent had begun to be only slightly less horrible) spoke out openly about the immigration policy with a casual, final, "we don't want "Asian hordes" to flock our country" - while the words are approximate within the first set of quotes they are exact within the second. I liked this housemate in most other ways, an open and friendly person. Apart from the habit of buying used clothes to save money and this statement so unconcious about the racism, and about geography or geology, a fine person.

A few years later a relative relocated to Australia, and we spoke about the place in a desultory mode, he assured me that Australia today was the country of future much as US was a few centuries ago. There was a new hope for the family and they emigrated. Now, they are settled. They rarely visit, unlike those that emigrate to US who visit at the very least every couple of years for a holiday, for keeping in touch with the roots and acquaint the new generation with the mother country. This family is perhaps uncomfortable about it, since differences are not tolerated in Australia, even more so than in say Germany.

I remember having precisely this conversation with a relative about how Australia compares with Germany, explaining that Germans don't want any outsiders but if and when one has to go there for say business, it works; while Australia is impossible since the people there won't work with an outsider at all, and the racism is in that respect much higher. Germans behave correctly often enough. Australians don't bother with rectitude.

First, refusing to take complaints from the victims fighting for life in hospitals, then refusing to concede it was racist, then advising the victims to not speak their own languages in public, publicly speaking out by police authorities and saying the students from India are too passive and thus their victimhoood, and finally after the international outcry and peace rally (where the marchers got arrested and dragged to police station physically) the victims are being advised by the same police not to keep vigils for protection and depend on the police for protection. The attacks meanwhile have continued, and why wouln't they? No discouragement to the attackers from the authorities. Who cares if the parliament of Australia claims it is not racist, certainly not the goons attacking the easy targets from India.

And now they mull over race crime laws.

Speaking in another language in a public place in US or UK gets perhaps a glance or not even that. A different dress in a public place or whatever in US worn by anyone usually gets a very genuine appreciation, while in UK again there is hardly a glance if that. In Germany speaking in any language other than German gets hostile glances from people around, the younger the crowd the more hostile the mute anger. But this is irrespective of the language. In fact speaking English in public is likely to be a far more sureshot way of one being a target of a hostile attack.

And now, in Australia, the police are explaining to the victims of racist murderous attacks that they - the victims - are too passive, and that they should not speak their "native" languages in public places. This is not really a change from the days when the natives of Australia, including children, were beaten up for speaking their own native language of Australia, by the settlers from Europe.

Furthermore, not only the police are refusing to take or record any complaints from the victims of murderous racist attacks, they are also in fact attacking peace rallies, dragging students who are waiting to hand over the complaints to authorities so violently the students are landing up in hospitals. And they are refusing to admit there is any racism.

So much for the immigrants' hope for Australia as a continent of the future -

The nation that is also a continent was settled originally by convict colonies from UK and had racist policies right from its start, with prohibition against Asian or any other people entering - and yet geographically it is a hop from Asia, in fact geologically Australia is connected to Asia, and as such Asians are the more natural immigrants to the continent.

Yet few people in the world realise that Australia is not a natural part of other colonies of Europe geographically, in fact it is a hop from Indonesia and other Asian islands while even New Zealand which is usually clubbed together with Australia is much further away as miles go. Tectonic plates that India and Australia belong to are conected at the very least if not actually same.

And yet the settlers from Europe, mostly from UK and second large population being from Germany, claim the continent belongs to them, by the last vestiges of a colonial mindset. That denies the very existence of the original population of the continent, much as it happens in the other continent across the Pacific from Australia, with the original populations either marginalised, packed in reservations (ghetto, anyone?) or used as almost bonded slave labour in all but words as in various countries from Columbia to Ushuaia.

Australians - the original ones - fare no better, in fact they were systematically decimated by the European colonisers.

For a long time the European settlers had abominable behaviour towards the natives of the continent (who are linguistically linked to Tamilians, of southern part of India, incidentally) and while males of European extraction used the native Australian women their children were taken away from them by force and families separated, broken, with generations of Australians suffering from identity loss and worse, psychological trauma, name it.

Attacks on students from India is only another recent manifestation of the xenophobia of the primitive mindset of European population of Australia, a mindset that one can see in Germany in recent times and in fact in Paris too, recently. This basically amounts to, if someone looks different from you in the slightest (colour of hair or eyes, colour of skin, not the same fashion as you are familiar with, lack of cosmetics or different clothes, ..) - attack.

This has more to do with the European settlers' racism, hatered of any others who do well, and general tendancy to dominate the world and make slaves out of everyone (think south "America", the continent that lost its indigenous name as well,) or herd them in "reservations" (as in US) or worse, destroy their families and lose their identities in an effort to "whitewash" them (as in natives of Australia) and generally treat them as animals or worse, in fact. Hatred for India is due to India doing well.

Australia not only makes money from the students from India, there is tourism as well, and a lot of films from India have been shot in Australia in recent years (India has the largest film industry in the world in terms of number of films made every year as well as the numbers in viewership around the world, as a matter of fact) - so the loss if people of India are put off from Australia are non trivial to say the least. Moreover it won't be as if Australia could do very well without all this - need of manpower was what made Australia open its gates in the first place to people of non European ethnicities, while ironically it sits in a neighbourhood not of Europe but of Asia, a hop from Brunei - which is visible from Australia's northern tip of Cairns.

Hate blogs on the internet are questioning people of other cultures are being allowed in the lands of Anglo culture if they hate it so much. This of course is turning it completely around into a falsehood. The attacks are from the European colonial settlers of the land on Asians, not the other way around. Demanding that everyone confirm and ape the Anglo culture willy nilly is merely prolonging colonial era, gone from the world except where hidden in caves of mindsets like these. Do they even realise this is precisely what nazi regime was about? No surprise there, after all the largest minority of settlers in Australia has been from Germany, chiefly post war.

Demanding that one give up one's own roots and culture is bringing back the Rabbit Proof Fence.

Which, just in case anyone is unaware of it, is not about the rabbits or the fence to protect the farmland which helped the two abducted little girls go back home walking across the span of the continent along it - it is about the European colonials' demands made from all other cultures however superior they be, to give up their own culture, roots, families, and ape the colonial rulers and settlers or else be caged in smaller and smaller parts of earth, work like slaves to support the luxuries of the European settled nations, and at some convenient point of time in future - convenient to the European settlers and their needs of luxuries that need almost slave labour for a while yet - be wiped off the face of the earth. Not that different from the Jews of Germany who were invited by the rulers in Berlin just a couple of centuries before they were massacred, invited for sake of betterment of the then appalling state of economy.

Are people from India picked to be the next victims of genocide after they have served the needs of economy of various nations appropriated by European settlers around the globe, along perhaps with natives of various of those continents? Or perhaps the natives of those continents serve better as a slave labour force and a zoo for exhibition ("we did not exterminate them, those left alive are allowed to live their way") while those from India with a strong culture with deep roots are invoking hatred for being better, just as Jews did by being relatives of the one worshipped (at least on the surface, with a lip service rather than an actual attempt at following and transforming) in Europe?